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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From the category archives:
Theme
Choosing a theme can be difficult, but crafting a design around it, or just using design as an unspoken theme, can be even more trying.
A good theme never shuts up. While theme shows up loudest on the pages dedicated to its explanation (opening spreads) and continuation (division pages), it should not fall silent in the rest of the book.
There is no such thing as a perfect theme, but any theme can become a great theme. The trick is to develop the theme thoroughly and commit to it.
With the last deadline met and yearbooks not set to ship for another two months, it was time for the staff to think of next year’s theme. But we were not going to simply brainstorm it as a class; each of them was to develop a theme and sell it to the rest of us. That’s where this theme project came in…
As the school year and the work on this year’s yearbook is winding down, advisers can already start their preparations for next year. One great way to get ready for next year is by attending a yearbook workshop. You can see all of Walsworth’s workshop options in our updated Workshop Central section, with listings broken down by month.
The yearbooks that make up this year’s version of Walsworth’s online Theme Gallery were not afraid to be bold in the ways they attempted to tell the stories of the year at their schools. Take a look in our gallery, and see how they wove their theme concepts through the entire book.
Yearbook staffs devote many hours to creating that ideal cover for their yearbook. It’s usually one of the first tasks the staff tackles once school is back in session, if not earlier at a summer workshop. Now, the Idea File blog can help. We’ve launched our new Cover Gallery under Showcase.
Yearbooks thrive on ideas. Designs, photos, articles, themes – all the elements of a yearbook need them. The thoughts generated from frequent brainstorming sessions are the lifeblood of any publication.
It is always with some hesitation that a wholly original approach is taken in developing a yearbook theme. Given the diversity inherent to our west Texas border town of El Paso, the 2009 Franklin High School yearbook staff and I sought to reflect the many dimensions of living on a border by choosing a theme relevant to our existence.
