Skip to product information
Number photo collage, cut to the digits of an age or a date
$9.99
A number photo collage is cut to the digits themselves - an age, a year, an anniversary - and filled with your own photographs. It prints square, twenty-four inches by twenty-four, and the reason is how many digits a milestone has: measured off the laid-out cells, one digit comes out about seven tenths as wide as it is tall, two come out half again wider than they are tall, three twice as wide, and a four-digit year three times. Two digits is the nearest of those to a square sheet, and it is the sheet that leaves each photograph the most room - the same fifty-five pictures come out an inch and three quarters across here, against an inch and a half on a landscape sheet where the digits are held down by the shallower height and four inches of paper sit empty down each side. Where this parts company with the lettered collage beside it is the photograph count. A letter is carried by its detail and goes coarse at the floor, but a digit has no detail to lose: a 6 and a 0 are two fat strokes and two clean holes, and rendered at fifty-five, at a hundred and forty and at two hundred and fifty the number is exactly as legible in all three. So the count here is not a legibility threshold. It sets how large each picture is and nothing else, which makes it a preference rather than a requirement. Two lines sit in a band under the digits - a greeting and a date in the example - and the layout keeps that band clear, so neither ever lands on the photographs.
See how it works in Canva: watch the how-to video.
How many photos fit
Every figure comes from the layout engine rather than a rule of thumb. The suggested count is where each photograph prints about two inches on each edge - large enough to make out a face across a room. Because this collage is cut to an outline rather than filling the sheet, that is far fewer photographs than a plain grid of the same size takes. The minimum is 9 photos; below that, parts of the outline can be left without a photo.
| Print size | Photos | Suggested |
|---|---|---|
| 12 × 12″ | 9–60 | 10 |
| 12 × 18″ | 9–100 | 10 |
| 16 × 20″ | 9–140 | 20 |
| 16 × 24″ | 9–170 | 20 |
| 20 × 20″ | 9–180 | 30 |
| 20 × 30″ | 9–275 | 30 |
| 24 × 24″ | 9–250 | 45 |
| 24 × 36″ | 9–375 | 45 |
| 30 × 40″ | 9–525 | 70 |
| 36 × 54″ | 9–875 | 100 |
| 40 × 60″ | 9–1075 | 120 |
Questions
How many digits can I have?
One to four, and digits only - the field will not take a letter, so a sixtieth typed as 60th is cut as 60. Two is what the square sheet is built around. One digit is a tall narrow shape, about seven tenths as wide as it is tall, and sits in the middle of the paper with a margin down both sides. Three reads wide and still works. Four is almost always a year, comes out three times as wide as it is tall, and sets the digits at under half the height two of them would get - it prints, it is simply small, and there is nowhere better to send it, because the lettered collage will not take digits at all.
Do more photographs make it look better?
Not the way they do on the lettered collage, and this is the place the honest answer costs us the upsell. The renders behind this page were made at fifty-five, a hundred and forty and two hundred and fifty on the same twenty-four inch square, and the 60 is equally unmistakable in all three; a digit is too fat a shape to lose. What changes is the size of each picture. The median cell is an inch and three quarters at fifty-five, an inch at a hundred and forty, and two thirds of an inch at two hundred and fifty. Choose by how many photographs you want to include and how close anyone will stand to it, not by how clearly the number will read.
What are the two lines under the digits?
A greeting and a date, set in a band along the bottom that the layout reserves and never lets a photograph into. The example reads Happy Birthday Lisa above the date of the birthday itself. Both are ordinary Canva text boxes, so the wording, the face, the size and the colour are yours, and deleting both leaves the digits alone on the paper. Nothing sits above them: the number has the whole top of the sheet, which is why this one has a single band where the lettered collage has two.
Does it have to be a birthday?
No. Anything that is a number: an anniversary, a shirt number, a house number, the year a couple married, the years a business has been open. The digits do not know what they are counting. Birthdays are what most of these are bought for, which is why the example is one, and a date under the number is the thing that tells a reader which kind it is.
Why is this one square when the lettered collage is landscape?
Because both were measured rather than eyed, and they came out differently. Five letters run about four times the height of one, which is a long low shape and wants the long sheet. Two digits run a little over one and a half, which is nearer a square than to anything else on offer. Same decision, same method, opposite answer - and the paper is chosen before a photograph goes anywhere near it.
What arrives, and can the number be changed afterwards?
A Canva template that opens in a free account with the digits already cut and every cell already placed. You drop your pictures in, reword or delete the two lines, and export it to print wherever you like; nothing is printed or posted at this end. The number is the one thing settled before the file is made, because the digits are cut into the layout rather than typed over it - so a 60 that should have been a 50 is a fresh template rather than an edit. Worth checking the age twice before you order.
More collages like this
See how it works
Not sure how it works? A 3-minute tour of the designer, from picking a shape to the Buy button.