Put your family on the wall

Personal pictures are a great way to decorate your walls.  Don't use pictures from magazines of people you don't know or who don't know you.  You may have done that when you were 12 but you're to old for that now (if you are still 12 then you have my enthusiastic permission to cover your walls in Taylor Swift).

Great design is a synthesis of form and content.  So when talking about putting up pictures of your family you have the content part covered.  They're your family, there's not much more to it than that.  Let's move on to form.  Here's where it gets touchy.  Pictures of your family might be frightful or embarrassing, but do not fear, I have some ideas.

Start by assessing each individual's physical strengths and weaknesses.  In a picture, people don't have to be what they are but can be whatever you want them to be.  It's a common practice in the fashion world to alter photos.  Get over your weak illusions of authenticity before you read any further.  It's very easy to give people hats and crazy glasses and to change their clothes and hair.  If they are hopeless for looking good they can at least look gallant, exotic or enigmatic.  And if even those qualities are hopeless, adding background elements is a great way to distract from the actual subject of the photo.  Throw in a vampire elephant or make it a birthday party with decorations which overwhelm the scene.  Sometimes a lame pose can be a great one when recontextualized.  So for example, take your boring Dendrochronologist uncle who insists on leaning against a tree every time he is photographed and turn him into a superhero with a brightly colored argyle sweater.  Let people know you may have a little bit of superhero blood flowing through your body while also hiding your uncle's huge forehead behind a mask. 

If you are short on ideas, take one idea and apply it throughout to create a themed wall.  Give them all handle-bar mustaches (yes, women too- don't ever go only halfway on an idea) or make them all superheroes.  Name the wall if you want.  Arrange it family tree style.  Don't forget your precious pets, they're family too.

Make copies and try a number of variations.  In the example photo here, you can see that the photos are all black & white, which unites the arrangement (it's also cheap to make copies), and the color is added manually.

Create a family you will be proud of.  Let people know where you like to imagine you came from.
Have fun.  An ugly family is not an insurmountable task.

And don't be afraid to include a picture of yourself.  You know you want to, so go for it.