Principles of design including balance, contrast, emphasis, unity, and simplicity.
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Design
STEP 1
Choose a Column Plan
Columnar design brings consistency to your publication and is the foundation of all good yearbook design. Depending on the amount of space you leave in the gutter and the external margins you want, the width of the individual columns will change. In the 8 column plan we will be using here, most likely each column will be around 12 picas in width. Notice just two picas have been left in the gutter. If you look closely, most layout sheets already have an eight columnar design marked out.
After you have mastered basic columns (4, 6, 8, etc.), you may want to use plus columns in your layouts. Usually one-half or twice the size of other columns on the spread, plus columns allow you to create a wide variety of formats.
Two yearbook advisers in different parts of the country came to that conclusion about the same time – Olga Martinez-Pagnussat at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami, Fla., and Jai Tanner at Franklin High School in El Paso, Texas. Previously, parents and students had great influence in how their personal ads would look in the book. At Our Lady of Lourdes, an all-girls school, the seniors would create their own collages, with photos that were scanned, grainy and too small.
As with any game, there are certain guidelines which need to be followed. Once those guidelines are mastered you will always win the type game. The type tips below outline some of those guidelines.
Nine Grids
This spread utilizes nine grids on each page with the story crossing four grids. Notice the rails on each side of the body copy, which frame the element. All captions occupy one grid, further developing the vertical look of this spread.
Each section should have its own look. This look is created by designing elements that will be repeated on every spread in the section. This repetition makes the spreads in the section hold together. They become unified.
Yearbooks are made up of 16-page signatures, always beginning with a right-hand page and ending with a left-hand page. In the printing process, a signature is a large sheet of paper on which eight pages (a flat) are printed on each side. After both sides have been printed, the sheet is folded and cut so the pages are in book form.
The child of a military family, D.J. Stout found it difficult to connect with people he would soon be moving away from. However, by age 11, he took his love of drawing and his fascination with publications and parleyed them into “The Weekly Laf,” a cartoon newspaper he drew on carbon paper and distributed around the neighborhood.
With that kind of creative aspiration, it is no surprise that Stout is now an award-winning designer and partner with international design consultancy Pentagram in Austin, Texas.
No one involved in the process knows everything they should know to produce a senior tribute for the yearbook. Most parents have never designed, photo-edited or written for a yearbook before. Yearbook designers and the tribute staff have never had children graduate. These two groups — parents and ads/tribute staff — are often at odds in the tribute production process.
