Make a School Yearbook
Creating a school yearbook is a great project allowing students to express their creativity and memories of the past year. With the help of a teacher of school staff member, the following steps will help turn your yearbook ideas into a reality.
Steps
- Determine a budget. The primary cost of the yearbook will be for printing. Find out if the company that does your school pictures provides yearbook printing, and for how much. If they can provide a yearbook with a reasonable amount of pages for a price that students and families are willing to pay, go with that company. Otherwise, you'll have to find a printer that can provide quality printing and binding for an affordable price. Printing in color looks nice, but color printing is much more expensive, so weigh the costs and options.
- Think of a theme for your yearbook. If using a portrait company, they may have theme ideas for you to choose from. The theme can be used on the cover, the title page, and throughout the book.
- Plan out the pages of the book. Here is an example:
- Page 1: Title Page
- Pages 2-3: School Staff
- Pages 4-13: Class portrait pages (Teachers' and students' portraits, with their names)
- Pages 14-19: Clubs and projects (one page for each club or project)
- Pages 20-25: Candid photos from around the school
- Page 26: Blank page for autographs
- If you are using a portrait company, they will have layout ideas you can start with. If you are using a printer, you'll have to come up with layout ideas yourself.
- Use your computer to crop photos and make layouts. Scrapbook software or print project software can be used to layout the pages. Make sure to find out what type of electronic file the printer needs to work from, and use software that will give you the right kind of output. Printing directly from a file usually gives better results than printing out, then taking the printout to the printer.
- Make sure there is adequate time to print the yearbook in time to distribute at the end of the year. Handing out yearbooks among students on the last day of school is a much better idea than having to send them in the mail over the summer.
- Finished.
Tips
- Try to make sure all students are included in the yearbook, not just the most active or popular students.
- Make a dedication page about your school or your principal or someone special to the school. This is a great tribute to honor a devoted individual.
- Use the school mascot throughout the book.
- Some ideas for yearbook themes include seasons, school days, animal kingdom, nature, peace, and friendship.
- If there are students who can draw well, have them contribute to art or even comics used in the book.
- Have students contribute their own writing. Poems or first person accounts about events at school make the yearbook unique and personal.
- Take lots of candid photographs, or pictures of people that are not posed for the shot. One way to do this is to get lots of people involved in taking the pictures. Use digital cameras, and make sure the resolution is high so that if you want, you can crop to a small area of the photo.
- Last but not least, make sure the publishing company has enough time to produce your order, especially around peak yearbook processing season!
- Make a large drawing of the year number and put the name of everyone in the school in the numbers. You'll have to use a very small font!
- Obviously, the pages are just suggestions, depending on how many students/classes you have.
Things You'll Need
- People to take pictures and help produce the book
- Cameras, computers, and software for page layout
- Plenty of time and patience.
