Most students don’t like to read, but they love to read yearbooks. The advisor usually doesn’t have time to write pieces for the yearbook. Here are some school yearbook design ideas to make your school yearbook stand out.
However, yearbook editors should rethink this option. Students read their yearbooks all year long. To give each page personality, you can also select a student or teacher from each class to write about anything going on throughout the school year. You can inject your school yearbook with style by personalizing it this way. Another option could be adding student artwork or poetry inside the yearbook or on the cover. Allow them to include photos of their social functions and outings away from school.
Get yearbook ideas for thematic elements from school locations, school-wide goals or school milestones. Contrast works wonders for a school yearbook, especially for yearbooks that don’t use much color. Contrast allows pages to pop without investing in expensive yearbook design software and color pages. Use stripes, circles and shapes to bring attention to text. Yearbooks that do use color can contrast light and dark colors. 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.
Make your yearbook stand out with the help of YearbookLife and our school yearbook publishing and printing services. We offer great yearbook design software including: EZ Book Yearbook Software and Yearbook Fusion Software. Contact us and get more information about our school yearbooks.
Consider the yearbook theme as the attitude or personality of the year for your school. It is a perfect medium to tell a story that will be remembered by all in a positive or spirit-related format. Your school yearbook should record the events of the year and celebrate the milestones of the year under the unified story format of your the theme. Yearbook themes come in different shapes and sizes based upon the attitude of the year. Yearbook themes are discussed and portrayed in all sections of the yearbook, especially on the cover, endsheets, title pages, opening pages, closing pages, and division pages for each section of the school yearbook.
Good Yearbook Theme Ideas:
Here are a few themes you can consider just for starters:
A Cut Above
A Day in the Life
A Flash from the Past
A New Awakening
A New Point of View
A Season of Change
A Step Above the Rest
A Touch of Class
Anyway You Slice It
Attention to Detail
Between the Lines
Breaking Thru
Built to Last
Capture the Magic
Catch the Moments
Caught in the Act
The key to developing a good yearbook theme is making sure you address the theme in every section of your yearbook as well as the cover and endsheets (if applicable). Consider playing off words of the yearbook theme as titles for each section or work on conceptual themes that play of a yearbook idea vs. words.
School yearbooks are usually bought by most of the students, but students seem to be considering the slowed economy as they decide whether to purchase their school yearbooks this year. More students are buying their school yearbooks early in the school year in order to get the yearbooks cheaper.
Even at the beginning of the year when the yearbooks are cheaper, the price can still be a bit high to purchase one every year. Schools typically price yearbooks low in the beginning of the year and incrementally raise the price as the end of the year approaches.
If you are going to buy your school yearbook anyways, why not buy it at the cheapest price? We at YearbookLife suggest not waiting until the last minute to buy you school yearbook, it could even be sold out. Here is a student video about “Letting the last yearbook get away.”
As a yearbook publishing company, we are often asked to provide our expert opinion about the yearbook publishing process. One question that is repeated time and again is what are the best ways to develop a yearbook theme, or ideas for developing your yearbook theme. YearbookLife is happy to share some yearbook theme ideas for your elementary, middle or high school yearbook project.
What is a Yearbook Theme?
Consider the yearbook theme as the attitude or personality of the year for your school
It is a perfect medium to tell a story that will be remembered by all in a positive or spirit-related format
Your school yearbook should record the events of the year and celebrate the milestones of the year under the unified story format of your the theme.
School yearbook themes come in different shapes and sizes based upon the attitude of the year.
Yearbook themes are discussed and portrayed in all sections of the yearbook, especially on the cover, endsheets, title pages, opening pages, closing pages, and division pages for each section of the yearbook.
Possible Yearbook Themes
The key to developing a theme is making sure you address the theme in every section of the yearbook. Here are a few themes you can consider just for starters:
A Cut Above
A Day in the Life
A Flash from the Past
A New Awakening
A New Point of View
A Season of Change
A Step Above the Rest
A Touch of Class
Anyway You Slice It
Attention to Detail
Between the Lines
Breaking Thru
Built to Last
Capture the Magic
Catch the Moments
Caught in the Act
Choose a theme and begin to develop it.
Example of a Theme
The key to developing a yearbook theme is making sure you address the theme in every section of the yearbook as well as the cover and endsheets (if applicable).
Consider playing off words of the theme as titles for each section or work on conceptual themes that play of an idea vs. words.
Consider working with a theme like: “Inside & Out”
Stud. Life: Inside our Walls
Sports: On the Sidelines
Clubs: Siding with Others
Portraits: Side by Side
Acad.: Sides of Success
Ads: Outside our walls…
Did you notice how a word that is part of the theme is developed and ties to yearbook theme as well?
You may think you have some great ideas for your yearbook, but you have to consider whether you have the legal right to include certain things in your yearbook publication. That is why every yearbook staff member should be familiar with the basics of copyright law.
Copyright law protects photographs, advertisement designs, cartoon characters, and the authors of original literary, musical, dramatic works. The government established copyright law to reward and stimulate the creation of these works, and to encourage their use for public benefit.
A copyright protects the way in which a creator expresses his or her idea, but not the actual idea or facts behind the idea. For example, an event like a news conference cannot be copyrighted, but a reporter can copyright his or her article about the event. Copyright protection is unavailable for names, titles of books and movies, slogans and short advertising expressions.
Only the creator of a copyrighted work or the owner of a copyright is legally allowed to reproduce, display, distribute, or create variations of a work. Any unauthorized use of a copyrighted work is copyright infringement. Authors and designers can sue an unauthorized user in federal court for copyright infringement.
When is a work copyrighted?
A work is automatically copyrighted when it is completed or placed into a “fixed” form. For example, a photograph is copyrighted. A design or a literary work is copyrighted once it is placed on paper or saved on a computer. An original work does not have to be published to receive copyright protection.
A photograph, design work and literary work are examples of material that are automatically copyrighted when completed or placed into a “fixed” form.
How do I obtain permission to use copyrighted material?
If you decide that you must have Superman® on the cover of your school yearbook, you will need to find out who owns the copyright so you can contact the party to request permission to use the character. You should always contact the owner of the copyright to request written permission to use it in a specified manner. If you include a piece of copyrighted material in your yearbook without obtaining permission from the copyright owner, you can be sued for copyright infringement.
Remember, a copyright protects any original work that has been placed into a tangible form. Be sure to obtain permission before you include any of the following items in your yearbook or other student publication:
photos clipped or scanned from newspapers or magazines;
excerpts from books or magazines;
cartoon characters or student drawings of a popular character (Mickey Mouse®, for example);
photos of characters from movies or television;
CD or cassette cover artwork;
magazine cover artwork, logos or graphics;
song lyrics, phrases or lines from songs;
works of art (painting or literature, unless in public domain).
To obtain permission to reproduce a copyrighted item, you must contact the copyright owner. The copyright information on the item should contain the name of the copyright owner or the wording requested by the copyright owner when permission is granted to use the material. The following are hints for locating copyright information:
Book: look on the title page or on the back of the title page
Cartoon characters: see material or merchandise where the characters appear
Photographs: look at the caption
CDs or cassettes: look at the printed material with the disk or cassette
To obtain permission to reprint a work from a record company or a publishing company, the American Association of Publishers recommends writing to the permissions department of the company and supplying:
the title, author or editor of the work and the date of publication;
a photocopy of the work, if possible, or a description of exactly what is to be used;
the number of copies that will be made;
why the copied material will be used;
whether the material will be sold;
how the copied material will be distributed;
how the material will be reprinted.
YearbookLife policy
If you are using something for your yearbook that is protected by copyright and you have obtained written permission from the owner to reproduce it, you will need to submit a photocopy of that proof of permission to YearbookLife with your pages. Much copyrighted material is not universally known. Ultimately, only you know whether the material in your yearbook is your own original work.
If YearbookLife happens to recognize copyrighted material for which proof of permission has not been furnished, we reserve the right to refuse to print it. If in doubt, check it out!
This is to protect both you and YearbookLife from possible copyright infringement and litigation resulting from infringement.
In conclusion Copyright law involves intangible, intellectual property. It is often complicated and can be interpreted in different ways by different individuals. If you plan to include anything in your yearbook that is not your own, such as a photo, a song lyric or a cartoon character, it is always best to consult the owner of the copyright.
Be sure to allow ample time when you are requesting permission to reproduce a work. It can take months to receive a reply and to negotiate with the copyright holder. YearbookLife always recommends that a school confer with its attorney prior to submitting material that may be copyrighted.
People’s lives are getting busier and busier each day, especially students. To make things easier for your fellow students to engage and give yearbook layout ideas, you need to make the lines of communication open by creating yearbook profiles on popular social networking websites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com. When you first take on your yearbook project you should launch a Facebook profile and MySpace page in order to increase awareness of your yearbook project. By doing this, it should also increase yearbook sales.
Most students will already be on these social networking websites and it will be very convenient for them to find you. It is good to get your classmates involved because this is where you are going to get a great deal of your material to make your yearbook. Spread the word and tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know about your yearbook profiles.
Ask the principal or dean of your school if you can post things around school announcing the launch of these new yearbook profiles. Maybe if your school has morning announcements you could ask if they could let the students know about your Facebook and MySpace yearbook profile pages and encourage them to visit and post their yearbook design ideas on Facebook and MySpace. You can use these yearbook profile pages as a way to come up with new ideas for your school yearbook. Yearbook photos are very important, so make it easy for students to submit photos and share stories with their classmates. You can also hold discussions and get students to share their yearbook ideas with each other.
