How do I Make a Yearbook for High School?

Creating a polished yearbook starts with a plan and a creative theme.

Fifty years after they graduate, students may still flip through their yearbooks from time to time. This important book details the life of the school year in pictures and words and helps students remember important parts of their year. Creating a good yearbook, though, takes work, preparation and focus. Making a plan and working on your yearbook at the beginning of the school year are ways that you can work toward creating a professional, well-loved yearbook.

Things You'll Need

• Yearbook Theme
• Ladder Diagram
• Graphic Design Software
• Page Templates
• Camera

Instructions

Making a Yearbook

1. Choose a theme for your yearbook. Yearbooks should have a unifying theme that sums up the year in one sentence. Think about what has happened in your school this year. How can you sum that up in one sentence or phrase? For instance, if you're school has undergone changes, a theme such as "A New Direction" or "A New Dawning" would be appropriate. Because yearbooks are usually divided into sections---sports, student life, clubs and classes and more---make sure that you can build on your theme. If you create a theme that asks students to look forward to the future, such as "Imagine," the student life section could be "Imagine All the People," and the sports section could be "Imagine the Winning Shot."

2. Develop a ladder at the beginning of the school year. According to yearbook company Walsworth, every good yearbook will start with a plan, or ladder. A ladder is a diagram that details what is going on every page of the yearbook. This can be a large poster that you display on the wall, or a handout that every student gets. Having a ladder at the beginning of the year ensures that you don't forget any sports or clubs, and it also allows students to get started right away on their pages.

3. Create templates. Professional-looking yearbooks have unifying elements, such as fonts, graphics and templates that tie the book together. Choose a set of fonts to use throughout your book. After you choose your fonts, create a set of templates in your graphic design software, so that the pages look like they're a part of the same book. Each page should not look the same, however, but you can have four different, yet similar, pages that you run through each of your sections. Without similar templates, a yearbook will look like it doesn't have a unifying theme.

4. Assign pictures, stories and pages. Once you know what your theme is and you've created templates with unifying elements, you can assign parts of the yearbook. You can either assign one or two students to be in charge of all of the photos, or you can simply assign spreads---two pages---and have each student be responsible for his own pictures.

References

• Jostens: Theme Ideas
• Walsworth: Every Good Yearbook Starts With a Plan