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.
Theme
Trends burst into the spotlight, and then their star power fades away. As an adviser, guiding teen staff members in using design trends can be scary, with pitfalls to be avoided.
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…
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.
1998 Tukwet and 1998 Tread theme development packages.
Traditionally, a yearbook’s cover, endsheets, title page, opening, closing and division spreads together form the book’s theme development package. On these theme pages, both the verbal and the visual are important. Recurring motifs-words, graphic elements, and designs-link these pages just as the theme or unifying idea links the sections of the book.
Sometimes a few words are all that is necessary in order to communicate a theme.
If a theme is truly relevant to a specific school and the student body of that year, it will be reflected throughout the yearbook in non-theme areas by the topics that are covered and the reporting methods used. In the mini-mag of the 1998 Lair, the staff covered a variety of issues in a round-table, conversational-style format that was inspired by their theme, “Communication.”