A Tad of Fad and Fun at Adviser Academy

Chronological yearbooks. Yearbooks with zero to seven sections. Yearbooks with only feature stories and photos.

Susan Massy, the yearbook adviser from Shawnee Mission Northwest High School, showed off some current trends in yearbook design during a session on Monday at Walsworth's Adviser Academy.

These were some of the current trends in yearbook mentioned in the Adviser Academy’s Tad of Fad session on Monday afternoon. Led by Susan Massy, adviser at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School in Shawnee, Kan., and David Zinsmeister, adviser at Manchester High School in North Manchester, Ind., the session showed and discussed examples of new and timeless design trends.

Massy told the group of advisers that she goes shopping every June or July to buy magazines and look for design ideas. She said the designs cannot be used as-is, but are inspiration for headlines, graphics and other treatments. In addition to acknowledging that Pantone’s color of 2010 is turquoise, other design examples shown included:

• Use of textures as graphics
• Color use, including as a graphic representation
• Repetition, for example, a quote bubble used throughout one article
• Hand-drawn fonts (used sparingly)
• Uneven text columns, or text columns that resemble a shape on the page (make sure the reader can follow the story)
• Calendars on division pages for chronological books
• Quick-read facts in a variety of sidebar graphics

After the session, Robyn Cooper, an adviser from Williamsburg High School in Williamsburg, Ohio, said an important take-away for her was “learning to pay attention to my environment and drawing design ideas from it. There is beauty in words everywhere I look, and I just need to look.”