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.
You are probably thinking this right now: You want me to actually teach yearbook? As if I didn’t have enough going on already — surly parents calling to complain, administrators wanting to “check” the yearbook spreads, computers that constantly crash, and a digital camera that now gives an error message whenever we need it most. The handouts from the last adviser seem to work just fine. Besides, I barely have time to get the yearbook done, let alone update the materials and try to teach the kids anything about yearbook or journalism.
What was your favorite Super Bowl commercial? At the Yearbooks Blog, we know what ours was! Honda got creative, inspirational and a bit nostalgic as they told viewers to chase their dreams in their 60-second Super Bowl ad. They also used some celebrity star power in the yearbook-themed spot. We got to see yearbook photos…
Yearbooks leave a lasting impact on students and this story shows how much yearbooks mean. Reporter Michael McIntyre recently wrote a piece for cleveland.com about the class of 1990 at Cleveland’s all-male St. Joseph High School, which did not produce a yearbook in their final year before merging with another school, Villa Angela. That meant…
Even outstanding quotations should not be out standing alone. Quotations are like grout: we cannot leave them out. Grout fills the crevices to make the wall or floor complete, but it is no substitute for tile. Quotes can fill in gaps in a story, but they cannot be substituted for a story.
Constructive criticism of last year’s yearbook can help assist in producing your next yearbook. Use the criteria on the checklist below, which is often used by state or national yearbook critique services, to critique your book in five categories.
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.
Distribution is an exciting time as students, faculty, parents and others look at the final product that the yearbook staff has worked so hard on all year. Yet, yearbook staffs dread a reader pointing out something in the book they do not like, or worse – errors. Like every other phase of yearbook production, plans need to be in place to handle customer concerns and complaints.
It is true – the best way to fund your yearbook is to sell ads and yearbooks. However, organizing such sales is time-consuming, and you must compete with other groups in your school, and sometimes other schools, for those dollars. If your yearbook program is self-sustaining like mine is – the district gives us no money – the task of funding a great yearbook every year seems daunting.
The sales plan I devised and have used for years is successful for many reasons.
Despite our differences, our common purpose is what motivates us: to produce a good book for our audience at a reasonable cost in manpower and dollars. We want to be proud of our efforts. And we have every right to have fun, too.
