How do you create and design a great school yearbook? You add words, character and a splash of contrast. YearbookLife gives you the following tips to help create and design a great school yearbook.
Most of the time students don’t like to read, but for some reason they love to read yearbooks. Many elementary schools do not like to use articles in their yearbooks because of the lack of writing power available to them. The advisor usually doesn’t have time to write pieces for the yearbook, and the students are too young to make a substantial written contribution.
However, yearbook advisors should rethink this option. Students read their yearbooks all year long. It makes complete sense to add some sort of small written piece to each page. You can manage this task easily by giving a brief description of what makes each class unique or different from the others. You don’t need to write a lot for each page to accomplish this goal. Request that each teacher submit a three to five sentence description about what makes his or her class great. You can have them email it to you, and then you can copy and paste the text where applicable.
To give each page some character, you can also select a special student or teacher from each class to showcase in your yearbook. Pick a person who may have a special skill or talent like playing the bagpipes or juggling. You may even want to add a joke or two to each club section such as music, sports and academics to spice up the yearbook. You can even use jumbo size text so there is less blank spaces in your yearbook.
You can add student artwork or poetry inside the yearbook or on the cover. You can make your book unique by adding elements of family life. You can have students bring in pictures of trips and vacations. You can include photos of social functions and outings away from school. These are just other ideas for personalizing your school yearbook.
Another way to add personality to your yearbook is to incorporate creative yearbook themes. Get yearbook theme ideas from school locations, school-wide goals or school milestones.
Contrast works wonders for a yearbook, especially for books that don’t use much color. Contrast allows pages to pop without investing in expensive software and color pages. You may consider using black backgrounds with white letters. Use stripes, circles and shapes to bring attention to text. Yearbooks that do use color can contrast light and dark colors. Consider adding borders and arrows to make photos and text stand out.
It is not hard to make yearbooks fun, but it takes a little effort, creativity and brainstorming to make them engaging. The next time you sit down to plan your school’s yearbook, look at the elements around you. The missing element for that great yearbook may be right in front of your face.
YearbookLife offers many different yearbook resources to help you create and design a great school yearbook. Contact us and find out how YearbookLife can help you and your yearbook staff.