Who makes your Memory Pencil books

Memory Pencil is the two of us: Julien and Ilan, two software-engineer dads, both 35, from the Paris area. Your family photos become a personalized coloring book, printed in France and shipped within 5 to 7 business days.

Our story

It all started with Ilan, who began showing Julien his family photos turned into coloring pages, which he gave to his kids. Julien did the same with his own, and they loved it. But we were printing them on our home printers, and it seemed a shame that no ready-made product existed to offer this to other families.

While building the book, we watched the whole family sit down to color together, and parents telling their kids the story behind each photo. It was no longer just coloring. It was a way to rediscover a memory from a new angle, from the grandkids all the way up to the grandparents.

That's why we made it a gift, and why we call it an album rather than a coloring book. A regular coloring book shows characters you don't know. A photo book gets flipped through, and that's it. The album sits in between: a bound book you keep once it's colored. Software engineers by trade, we built the website and the photo-to-drawing pipeline ourselves. Memory Pencil launched in late May 2026.

How your photos become a book

Each photo runs through a five-step pipeline: mechanical preparation, line extraction by a specialized AI model, line simplification, page-by-page review, then layout and on-demand printing by our print partner. The review step is what sets our service apart from an automatic generator. It's what makes sure no distorted face and no broken line ever ends up in your book.

Details on the pipeline and the review step are in our article AI and personalized coloring.

Designed in France, printed in France

Design, review and customer care happen at our Paris studio. Printing and binding are done on demand by our print partner. Orders delivered in France are printed and bound in France. For deliveries outside France, production is routed to the workshop closest to the address, with the same specs. The inside paper is a 90 gsm uncoated stock, sourced from sustainably managed forests, picked because it takes colored pencils and water-based markers well. Alcohol markers bleed through and need a protection sheet. We say so in the FAQ. The binding depends on the format: saddle-stitched for the 6-photo book, hardcover for the 12 and 24-photo books.

Your photos, what we do with them

Your photos are stored in Europe (Cloudflare R2, EU region) only for as long as we need them to make the book. They are never used to train any model, never shared with a third party, and kept only during processing (generation, printing, delivery), then automatically deleted 7 days after delivery. Full details are in our privacy policy.

Who is behind the brand

Memory Pencil is run by its two partners: Julien Cornille and Ilan Binisti. On the legal side, the business has its own company, MEMORY PENCIL (SAS, registered with the RCS Paris since October 2026, SIREN 130 785 884), with Ilan as president and Julien as managing director. Our address, the full legal notice and the publication director are on the legal notice page.

Spreading the word about Memory Pencil

Love our books and want to tell people about them? Our ambassador program rewards those who share Memory Pencil: your contacts get a discount, and you earn a commission on every album ordered thanks to you.

Get in touch

For any question before or after an order, write to us at contact@memorypencil.com. We reply within one business day.