How to Make a Good School Yearbook

There are a few good tips for making a good yearbook. The best ways to ensure that you have a good yearbook is to pay attention to the details. This means holding onto the theme of the yearbook, having great articles and pictures and making sure it all comes together.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Pick a theme. This theme should define the school year for the yearbook. This is the hardest part of the yearbook process. You need to anticipate what is going to be interesting and popular among the student population for the rest of the year.

2. Stick to the theme. The easiest way to make sure that you have a professional, cohesive yearbook is to make sure that the theme is carried throughout the yearbook. You will need to make sure that each article, layout and section relates and upholds the overall theme of the yearbook.

3. Plan ahead. It's easy to get behind when you're working on a yearbook. It's a huge process. Make sure that you know when each school event is and that there will be yearbook staff there to not only experience what goes on but to take pictures.

4. Make a schedule. Cataloging an entire year of events for hundreds of students is a huge job. You need to make goals for each month, week, even each day to meet so that you stay on top of the whole process.

5. Get as much material as you can. The more information that you have the more options that you will have about each school function the better. All this extra information may seem like a waste but this gives you options and will make sure that you will have the absolute best for the yearbook.

6. Take as many pictures as possible. For every 20 pictures that you take, only a handful will be truly great pictures. The pictures are the main part of the yearbook so you want to have the best pictures you can get.

7. Interview as many students as possible. Make sure that if you're going to get polls, quotes, and comments from students that you get as wide an opinion as possible. Be sure to pick different students each time you are polling or asking questions. The yearbook should be a representation of the entire student body.

8. Recheck everything that you do for the yearbook. Spelling, grammar and layout mistakes will be noticeable to anyone who is going to look at the yearbook with fresh eyes. The fewer mistakes there are, the more professional the yearbook is going to be.