Graduations

Everything people want to tell them before they go

A graduation card holds four lines. Collect a page from each person who got them here instead — the coaches, the grandparents, the teacher from sophomore year — and print it as a hardcover they take with them.

Start a graduation book See how it works
Free to set up · no payment until you print

The advice arrives exactly when it is least likely to land

Everything people want to say to a graduate gets compressed into a receiving line and a stack of cards opened in one sitting. Most of it is genuinely useful — what someone learned in their own first year away, the thing they wish they had done differently — and almost none of it survives the week.

A book holds it until it is wanted. Each person writes one page: a memory of the graduate, a photo from whenever they knew them best, and the one piece of advice they actually mean. The grandmother, the swim coach, the AP history teacher, the friend moving to a different state in August.

It works for high school and college equally, and it works as a group gift when a class or a team wants to send off a teacher, a coach or each other. Parents also use it as the thing that gets assembled quietly through senior year and handed over at the end.

A young woman sitting on a bed looking through a printed photo book
Read on the day, and again in a dorm room in November.
How it works

Start it about a month before the ceremony

Spring is the worst month to ask anyone for anything, so give a deadline and send one reminder.

STEP 1

Create the project

Their name, a photo, the graduating year, and a contribution deadline about a week before the party.

STEP 2

Send the link wide

Family, the group chat, the team, the teachers. Contributors open it in a browser and go — no app, no password, nothing to sign up for.

STEP 3

Pages come in

Photos, stories and advice arrive and are arranged into finished pages. You review each one before it goes in.

STEP 4

Print for the party

Order the hardcover, or download the free PDF if the timing gets tight. Extra copies are common for grandparents.

Why this works for a graduation

It collects the two things a graduate cannot get from a card: the whole cast, and advice they can read later.

Teachers and coaches can contribute

Anyone with the link can add a page, so the people who shaped the last four years are not limited to whoever comes to the party.

The old photos come out better

Scans and phone pictures of prints are corrected on upload, which matters when relatives send the first-day-of-kindergarten shot.

It is read when it is needed

A card is read on the day. A book of people telling you what they know gets opened again in a hard week months later.

A group gift that scales

A whole team, class or extended family can contribute, and everyone can put a little toward printing.

People say the real thing

Given a prompt and a box to write in, teachers and coaches say things they would never say out loud at an assembly.

It goes with them

A 10-inch square matte hardcover with a printable spine — made to sit on a shelf in a room that is not home yet.

Prompts worth putting in the invitation

“Write something for the graduate” gets you six variations on good luck. A question does not.

“What were they like when you first knew them?”
“What do you know now that you wish you had known at eighteen?”
“The moment you realized what they were capable of.”
“A photo of them from as long ago as you have.”
“What should they absolutely not worry about?”
“What do you hope for them in the next four years?”
Pricing

Free to collect, and the group can cover the printing

Nothing is owed until you order a book, and gifts from contributors apply straight to the print cost.

$0

To start and collect

Create the project, invite everyone, and gather photos and stories for free. You only pay if you print.

$34.95

Printed hardcover, 20 pages

A 10-inch square matte hardcover with matte interior pages, plus shipping. Extra pages are $1.25 each.

$1.25

Per gifted page

Friends and family can chip in toward printing — each $1.25 covers one page of the finished book.

Questions

Graduation memory book questions

How far ahead should I start?

About a month. Two to three weeks for people to contribute, then roughly 96 hours for production plus shipping. Spring is busy for everyone involved, so a visible deadline matters more here than for most occasions.

Can teachers and coaches contribute?

Yes, and they are usually the best pages. There is no account to create and nothing to install — they open the link, write, and attach a photo if they have one.

Does it work for college as well as high school?

The same, and often better — the contributor list is more scattered geographically, which is exactly the problem a link solves.

Can we do one for a whole class or team?

Yes. Use the team or class as the subject rather than one person, and everyone contributes their own page. Copies can then be ordered for each family.

What will it cost?

A hardcover is $34.95 for the first 20 pages, then $1.25 for each page after that, plus shipping. Thirty contributors comes to about $47.45. The PDF is free.

Can we order copies for the grandparents?

Yes — additional copies of the same book can be ordered, which is common when several households want one.

Related pages

Other occasions people build books for.

Send them off with more than a card

Start the project, send the link to everyone who got them here, and hand over a book at the party.

Start a graduation book