For the past two decades, Blurb has been more than a self-publishing platform—it’s been a tool for photographers, designers, and storytellers to bring their visions into the world. From first-time bookmakers to seasoned artists, these creators have used print to preserve memories, experiment with ideas, and connect with their audiences in lasting ways.

As part of our Stories that Bind campaign, we’re celebrating the people behind the books. These are the makers who embraced Blurb early on—or discovered it later in their journey—and found new freedom to create on their own terms.

Here, six creators reflect on why bookmaking matters to them, how Blurb revolutionized the publishing industry, and what they’d share with the next generation of self-publishers.

Why print still matters for creative director Rafid Naeem

For Toronto-based photographer, videographer, and creative director Rafid Naeem, making a book was about more than preserving images—it was about reconnecting with the joy of creating for himself.

“My first Blurb book was a photo collection from our family trip to Turkey in 2021,” Naeem says. “Turkey had always been my mom’s dream destination, and we were able to make that trip happen.”

He went on to print a book from the trip. “It completely transformed the way I approach photography,” he says. “In today’s social media-driven world, it’s easy to get caught up in chasing likes and views…Making my book reminded me why I started in the first place. It allowed me to reconnect with my passion and capture photos for myself again instead of an algorithm.”

In 2024, Naeem published JAPAN, a photo book documenting a long-awaited journey with nine friends. What started as a personal project grew into something larger: JAPAN became the hero book in Blurb’s anthem video, part of Stories that Bind, a campaign celebrating the connective power of self-publishing and 20 years of Blurb empowering creators.

“Creating books used to be complicated and inaccessible, but Blurb has truly revolutionized the self-publishing space,” Naeem says. “It has empowered artists by giving them an easy and accessible way to share their stories through a tangible and physical format.”
For Naeem, self-publishing with Blurb isn’t just about making books—it’s about telling stories and sharing them with others. “Don’t overthink it. Just start. Your book doesn’t have to be perfect to matter. Blurb makes it possible for anyone to bring their vision to life.”

How self-publishing launched photographer Anton Kusters’ career

Belgian photographer Anton Kusters is renowned for his immersive, long-form projects that delve into memory, impermanence, and hidden worlds. Early in his career, he immersed himself in the secretive world of the Yakuza in Tokyo, documenting it through images and personal reflections.

At the time, Kusters was searching for a way to share his work as it unfolded. It was 2010, the tools for self-publishing were still in their infancy, and Blurb was the only company he could find that offered high-quality, print-on-demand books. 

“For my Yakuza photography work, I wanted to move fast [and] show my work as it was ongoing, in book format, literally as I was making it,” he says. “Blurb proved to be quite handy in that respect.”

The resulting publication, 893 Magazine, became a springboard for Kusters’ career. He entered it into Blurb’s Photography Book Now awards, where it won the Editorial category. “It quite literally kickstarted my career.”

Through the awards, Kusters connected with juror Monica Allende, then photo editor for The Sunday Times Magazine. Allende went on to publish the work and has since become a long-time collaborator. “Many moments came together, and the rest is history,” Kusters says.

Kusters’ original magazine paved the way for his acclaimed photo book Odo Yakuza Tokyo, which continues to reach audiences worldwide. And he credits Blurb with helping to change not only his own career, but the landscape of visual storytelling. 

“The self-publishing landscape exploded in popularity after the early 2010s, and it changed the traditional publishing landscape forever,” he shares. “Artists now have complete power to create, publish, and distribute their own books…we became empowered to be our own authors, to not fear jumping into the deep.”

For those considering their first book, his advice is simple: “Just do it…there is so much room for experimentation, to make the book a true art object, to have fun along the way.”

Designer Bob Aufuldish on how Blurb made publishing accessible to all

San Francisco-based graphic designer Bob Aufuldish has spent his career at the intersection of visual storytelling and book design. As a cofounder of Aufuldish & Warinner, he’s worked on countless publications for photographers, artists, and institutions—and his relationship with Blurb began during our earliest years.

Aufuldish was a presenter and judge at one of Blurb’s first Photography Book Now competitions, where he saw firsthand how the platform opened the door to professional-quality publishing for everyone. “What I immediately loved about Blurb was that the entire process became democratized—for non-designers and designers alike,” he says.

As a designer deeply familiar with high-end production processes, he recognized the transformational potential of print-on-demand. “In the classes I teach…I have my students produce their publications. It’s the best way for students (or anybody) to see what they’ve really made, and Blurb makes it easy.”

For Aufuldish, this approach to publishing reflects a broader creative truth. “Your first book probably isn’t going to be as good as you hoped it would be…so as thrilling as it is to finally see your book made real, look at it with a cold eye and make it again. And make it better.”

17 years of bookmaking with photographer Joshua Deaner

For nearly two decades, photographer Joshua Deaner has relied on Blurb to bring his projects into the world, not just on gallery walls, but in book form.

“Blurb is a great tool for laying out and sequencing a body of work,” Deaner says. “I was looking for a way to finish a project. While gallery exhibitions are ideal, they’re not always accessible. Making a book became my own form of exhibition. A book is something tangible and lasting. It gave my project a sense of closure and helped me to begin new work.”

Deaner still remembers the moment he held his first book, i sell fish, in his hands. “It was a great feeling. Holding it made my images feel more real,” he shares. “It gave me a sense of accomplishment and helped me believe in myself and my work.”

Over the years, Deaner has returned to Blurb to bring his work into book form, building a stack of titles that reflect his creative journey. He credits Blurb with opening up possibilities for artists everywhere. “Prior to print-on-demand, only a lucky few could get their projects printed by a book company or afford to fund the whole thing themselves. Blurb changed all that by letting anyone print one copy of their own book.”

His advice for first-time bookmakers is simple: “Start playing around with different book sizes, layouts, and…paper choices…The process itself will teach you a lot, and it’s satisfying to hold something you’ve created in your hands and be able to share it with others.”

Music photographer Flemming Bo Jensen on creativity in print

When Danish photographer Flemming Bo Jensen made his first Blurb book in 2010, he didn’t know it would spark a 15-year journey of creative exploration. From travel photobooks on Peru to limited editions and team gifts, bookmaking has become a natural extension of his work behind the camera.

“Blurb continues to impact both my creative journey and career,” Jensen says. “I’ve encouraged and helped others kickstart big book projects. I have created books [like] special limited edition products, small portfolios to give away, notebooks for myself and others, magazines, and mock-up books that turned into a huge traditional offset print book project for a band. I feel my own creativity and imagination are really the limit with Blurb.”

His advice for first-time bookmakers? “Have fun. Don’t overthink it—there are no rules. make some test books and just really play and explore! And make your books personal. I had to make a big, traditional landscape photobook to realize that while it was nice, it also felt too generic. I wanted something more ‘me,’ more personal.”
“Blurb helped make self-publishing a perfect choice for a lot of photo projects!” says Jensen. “By having so many options of different book and magazine [options] it’s helped lots of people get into physically printing…In a world of far too much photography only existing online, this is an amazing thing!”

For Judith Stenneken, a first book led to a lifelong creative practice

In 2009, Berlin-based visual artist and House of Mbiavanga co-founder Judith Stenneken was encouraged by a teacher to think about her thesis project not just as an exhibition, but as a book. That decision unlocked something in her creative process, and photo books have been part of every project she’s done since.

“Blurb was pretty new back then, and so was the opportunity to make single copies of books without breaking the bank,” Stenneken says. “It was the perfect playground to dip your foot into bookmaking.”

Seeing that first book in print was transformative. “I was proud and happy. There’s a sense of accomplishment when you’re holding a physical object that contains the hard work you put into a project. It’s very different from just seeing your work on a screen.”

The following year, Stenneken’s book Last Call won Blurb’s Photography Book Now competition. That milestone encouraged her to follow her dreams—she moved to New York and earned her MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from SVA. Creatively, the process of thinking through a project in book form continues to shape her work. 

“Editing and sequencing can reveal patterns in your imagery you weren’t necessarily aware of,” she shares. “It’s a moment of bliss when that puzzle of images starts to make sense in a way you didn’t anticipate. For me, it’s that dialogue with your work that holds the magic of artmaking. And creating books is the tool that gets me there.”

Stenneken sees Blurb as part of a larger shift that has empowered artists over the last two decades. “When I started with photography, there were a handful of photographers published by large publishing houses with book edition sizes in the thousands. Today, you have thousands of visual artists self-publishing as few as a handful of books,” she states. “It’s a shift towards democratizing artmaking that I deeply appreciate [and] Blurb helped open that door.”

For those just starting, her advice is clear: “Print it! Don’t be satisfied with a PDF version of your book. That’s not a book…creating physical copies of your drafts will help you come up with ideas you otherwise would not have been able to anticipate.”

Print unlocked new ways for photographer Christelle Enquist to share her vision

Spanish-Swedish photographer Christelle Enquist didn’t set out to build an exhibition or lead a creative community when she made her first Blurb book. In 2020, after four years of taking photography seriously, she was seeking a way to share her work more intentionally.

“I didn’t want it just living on hard drives or Instagram—I wanted something physical,” Enquist says. That first project, a zine called East to West, was based on a simple idea. “Most of the places I had photographed fell along a rough east-to-west line, [this] gave me a structure to pull the work together.”

What started as a small personal project grew into something much larger. Over the next four years, East to West evolved into a collaborative body of work with her husband, Jorge Delgado-Ureña, culminating in a retrospective exhibition of 107 photographs in Menorca, Spain. They even created a second version of the zine, also with Blurb, as the exhibition catalogue.

“All of a sudden, this whole world of print, zines, and bookmaking opened up to me,” Enquist says. “After spending so much time behind a screen, seeing it in print made everything feel real and complete…It’s like holding your creativity in your hands.”

As co-founder of The Raw Society—a global community dedicated to fostering creativity and connection in street, travel, and documentary photography—Enquist now helps others discover that same sense of creative agency through photography and bookmaking. And they just happen to use Blurb in their workshops.

“Blurb democratized publishing,” she says. “It gave independent creators the tools to share their work without needing a traditional publisher. That freedom has opened doors for so many voices, especially in photography, design, and art, that might not have been heard otherwise.”

Her advice to aspiring bookmakers is simple: “Just do it. Your first zine or book probably won’t be great (mine definitely wasn’t), but that’s not the point. It’s all part of the process.”

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Blurb is a self-publishing platform that empowers creators to design, print, and share their own professional-quality books and magazines. Whether you’re making your first photo book or producing a portfolio to showcase your work, Blurb gives you the tools to bring your vision to life—one copy at a time or at scale. Ready to make your own? Get started with Blurb.