In their quest to keep their yearbook relevant, this award-winning, veteran adviser’s staff has abandoned strongly held theme development principles to make an emotional connection with their readers.
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Crystal Kazmierski
Fill your coffers by letting parents honor their seniors with adoring text and baby photos of them in Superman Underoos or silly hair bows.
Story leads work much like ice cream toppings. They draw attention to the subject, making it more attractive, imparting a distinct “flavor” or “personality.”
Leads can inspire. They can question. They can shock, tickle, tease or entertain. But what is their ultimate purpose? Working together with headlines, designs and photographs, leads invite readers to come inside, kick off their shoes and stay for awhile. Good leads should not just grab attention; they should also harmonize with the tone or attitude of the copy. Even the cleverest lead, however, cannot salvage a poorly written story. A punchy lead followed by a boring story is a letdown. Instead, that same lead should pull the reader into a fabulous story that deserves to be read. All of the elements need to function together to make a meaningful presentation.
There is only so much a designer can say with a white page. True, the beauty and simplicity of a plain background can be stark and dramatic, calling readers’ attention to a stunning photograph, a dramatic headline, or an isolated story. But other times, less is not more, and, well, more is needed. Textured backgrounds have been a staple of magazine designers for years. They are not too distracting, but give the page a nice feel.
Like all design elements, fonts should be used with purpose. And – let’s face it – the purpose of a yearbook is to tell the stories of the year. So the fonts chosen to “speak” shouldn’t draw attention to themselves but rather to the content on the page.
Design rules have their place in explaining the process of design and structure to beginning designers. These rules also allow readers to easily navigate each spread. It is probably better to follow them until you are ready to purposefully break them. But when rules begin to inhibit creativity by emphasizing what “should” be done over what “could” be done, it’s time to take a risk. If you can accomplish the purpose of the rules (readability, structure, balance) in different ways, you might end up creating fresh, contemporary designs with a whole new attitude. So consider these rules to break to achieve dynamic designs with personality.
Embark. Embark. Now there is a theme word for you. Every yearbook in eras past has featured threshold-crossing, challenge-facing, embarking students in some form or another.
My mind was firmly entrenched in the third paragraph when my name was called. “Not now,” I whined as I scurried to finish an article in People magazine before having my teeth checked. Of all the days for my dentist to be on schedule! I had just found the ultimate story – an intriguing topic covered from an unusual angle and including a smattering of opinion, as well as multiple methods of reporting the facts.
The old saying is that a good story will write itself. That is a myth. Really good stories, regardless of the topic, are the result of a focused angle, in-depth interviews and a creative writing style. Take a look at the following two examples of a personality profile written about a high school custodian. Although they were both written about the same individual, they were obviously the result of different reporting styles.
Writing copy – good copy – can be the most burdensome part of producing a yearbook. It often involves laboring for hours over a single caption; tearing through the thesaurus to find the perfect word; struggling to gather effective quotes; never settling for “good enough” if there is something better. Mentally exhausting? Yes! And yet, the essence of excellent yearbook writing can be summed up in one simple word: detail.
