High School Yearbook Layout Ideas
Students in high school show off their personalities with the clothing they wear, the music they listen to and more. A yearbook should reflect the overall essence of a school by having a personality of its own. Variety throughout the yearbook will give each section a distinct tone. The students in yearbook class will enjoy using their creativity to compile the book, and students seeing the finished product for the first time will be impressed.
Other People Are Reading
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The Cover
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The cover of the yearbook makes the first impression. Get creative, but not too creative. The cover should remain timely. A yearbook from the 1980s with a fake acid-wash-jean appearance to the cover looks dated now---avoid current trends in your design.
Maybe a student artist could paint something for the cover, or art classes could hold a contest and let students vote on the winner.
The photo window is also a clean design for a yearbook cover. Simply design around a hole in the middle of the cover that exposes a photo on the first page of the yearbook. It could be of students laughing, or it could be part of a piece of art.
Class Pictures
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A layout for the class photos pages is more difficult. Usually, because of costs, as many photos are placed on a page as can fit. The only way to get creative in this sense is to try to work around that as much as possible.
Instead of regular page numbers, include a photo of students holding up signs with the page numbers. Or have students actually form the page numbers with their bodies. Even having a drawing of cartoon animals forming the numbers would be different. Look for ways to add visual interest to a normally boring layout.
Another way to spruce up the class photos page would be to add student quotes around the borders of the page.
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Sports and Club Pages
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Club pages are probably the easiest to get creative with because of their specific nature. For a film club, a film-reel layout to display members' photos would work. For a chess club, show each member's head on a different chess piece. Make sure the club's adviser signs off on anything too creative.
Sports pages are also easy, because many photos are usually available to choose from. Consider making team pages that resemble a scrapbook. Use the "Polaroid picture" technique, throw in "stickers" and "jerseys" as decoration on the "scrapbook." Show game stills, but also show photos of the team hanging out and laughing. Give the photos personality, and the entire yearbook's personality will come to life as well.
Blank Pages
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Recently, more schools have incorporated blank pages to add more writing room for student inscriptions. Blank pages are useful, but they could look better.
Watermarked pages are attractive, but only with generic backgrounds, such as scenery from the school's campus, flowers or clouds, to assure the image does not interfere with the writing space.
A blank page with a border would also work. Quotes from students, stats from games or lyrics of the school's fight song are all popular options.
Dedication Pages
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Dedication pages are the pages in the back of the yearbook where senior students' family members post messages, usually with photos, telling everyone how proud they are of their soon-to-be graduate. The school usually charges for these dedications, like advertisements, based on size and as a way to get more money for the yearbooks themselves.
To layout these pages in a more creative way, give parents more options. Instead of just having rectangular options, offer them oval options or round options. A round dedication could go in the middle of a page with four square dedications in each corner around it, for instance.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Wikipedia Commons
