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Jill Chittum
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A crowd of at least a couple hundred students and advisers crowded in Friday morning for Del Campo High School yearbook adviser Jim Jordan’s Design Quest 2017 session, as the educational agenda of the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention in Los Angeles began. Jordan guessed that he has conducted his Design Quest session…
Several advisers were asked to send us their favorite trade secrets for organization. Trello was named most often. In addition to Trello, here are tips that help advisers keep some aspect of their yearbook program organized. You may want to try one or two as you organize or update your classroom or procedures over the…
The latest edition of Idea File magazine is here, as the spring 2016 issue is now available over in our Idea File gallery section. This issue is filled with tons of useful content that will help inspire you to finish off the current year strong, and start looking ahead to next year. There are columns…
Remember the camaraderie, excitement and motivation as you started your current yearbook? That is our idea of Yearbook Zen. Now you may be asking where the energy and time have gone as you are dreaming of your summer vacation. But it’s still a good time to get back to the idea of Yearbook Zen.
Clearly explain the group’s topic and goal.
Allow participants a few minutes to think.
Shopping malls are great places to get ideas for designs, fonts, headlines, subheads, folios, and even stories. Trips to two malls with two yearbook advisers and staff members yielded plenty of ideas for yearbooks. The ideas can be found in the Spring 2004 issue of Idea File, Volume 14, Issue 3. However, there were too many good ideas to fit in the printed issue. Here are additional images from the two trips with ideas that you may find useful.
Those of us who have been advising for a while know yearbook production is a year-round job, no matter what our teaching contract says. Just like the Boy Scouts, the better prepared staff members are, the better the outcome. Here are ways to keep students thinking yearbook over the summer.
Figuring out new and creative ways to bring in money is an annual goal for many yearbook staffs. After all, yearbook programs need funds to keep making improvements to the book. Some staffs come up with some really fun ideas. Here is a quick look at a few of those ideas that were very successful for the schools involved:
Mall crawling is an inexpensive means to collect ideas for yearbooks
Teens are familiar with their local mall — the location of their favorite stores, favorite eating spots and the best places to hang with their friends.
Brainstorm. Any word with “storm” in it must be fairly intense. When you brainstorm for story ideas, dozens of thoughts are going through your mind at once. You may be using your brain, but brainstorming can be a gut-wrenching process. However, there are ways to capitalize on the process to make it more useful. Brainstorming for story ideas is a year-round activity for the yearbook staffs at three high schools where the advisers have tried-and-true methods for helping their students through the process.
