Yearbook Peeps....HEEEELP!!!
 

Ok, so as part of my new job, I've been given the ummm....'honor?' (lol) of doing the yearbook. Thing is, I have NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO idea what the heck I'm doing.

Right now I'm allowing the students to take the lead and do it, but I know eventually I need to get some kind of grasp about it. Last year the yearbook staff decided to print their own yearbooks. This year they want to get it published (or find SOMEWAY to have a hardcover yearbook).

I'm assuming that getting them published costs a lot, and I don't know what our budget is.

Can anyone help me with ANY kind of information? If you were in yearbook in MS/HS what things did you do? What resources did you use, etc? I know I can always ask the previous teacher, but he's moved up and i know he'll be busy, so I don't want to bug him too much.

We published ours through Taylor Publishing in Dallas.

If you have specific questions, shoot me a PM :)

I wasn't on staff, but we sold our yearbooks, they weren't free in HS. That's how they afforded professional publishing.

I was on the yearbook staff in 7th & 8th Grade... That was like 10 years ago so obviously, I don't remember. But yeah, they were never free. Our high school yearbooks were $40-50. Even our elementary school yearbooks cost money, but they cost a lot less!

Ditto.

I was editor, but that was in the era before computers so I won't be much help to you now. I do remember that Taylor did provide a rep to us that actually visited our school, did some training, etc. We even went to workshops.

And like drole said, we sold ours.

Oh I know they aren't free, clearly. I never meant anything about free, I just meant I don't know what kind of budget we are working with right now. Of course we are going to sell ours, and all....

I was just wondering if you all had any tips for me, in general. What things did you all do in that class? What can I do to help these kids. They are 7th and 8th graders and they have more experience doing this than I do! lol.

When I was staff, we focused on reporting and writing copy. More experienced staff were in charge of photos. As editor, I was in charge of editing other students' copy and layout, mostly.

I'd do an exercise asking students to pick their favorite layouts from magazines and then you can comment on why they're good (white space, etc). Also, get them prepared for reporting by doing mock interviews.

I'm sure I'll think of some more stuff, but this is all I have at the moment lol

And our middle school yearbooks were cheap (~$15-20, but they were paperback). HS yearbooks were much more expensive.

One thing that helps is to sell ads to parents and businesses. Graduating "seniors" would have pictures submitted for their ads and you'd price the ads per quarter page up to full page.

The actual design for the yearbook is pretty easy. Most of the pages are class pictures which are mostly a grid with a text section to one side for student names. Pictures are labeled. It's really easy. I was on yearbook staff in middle school and co-editor of my med school yearbook. Unless they have everything on computer now, everything is done on grid paper so you just have to count blocks and draw out your layouts. It definitely is not too hard for a 7th grader. I did 40 pages all by myself in med school in a week. The creative stuff is the extra pages where you can do collages, ads, etc. That might be the 8th graders job.

I forgot about the ads. We didn't do those in middle school (we just had students submit photos for collages), but they made a bunch of money in the HS yearbooks.

And now that I think about it, our MS yearbooks didn't have a bunch of varying layouts. The HS one, though (because of all the different organizations, etc), required multiple layouts to remain interesting.

ETA: Another thing. When we had sent in all the files for the HS yearbook, there was a month that we had nothing to do. Our advisor had us put together a 'poetry' book, allowing students to submit original pieces. It was another opportunity for us to test our design skills and make some extra money (we printed ~200 and sold them for $5-10 a pop). That's another idea for you.

ETAA: What are you going to be using to design the pages? Like AOII Angel said, we practiced on grid paper, but ended up actually designing the book in Quark. I think Quark and InDesign are two programs that'd work well (depending on your budget).

Ours was published by Jostens. But that was, thirty years ago. Yes, way back in the day.

Have you googled any of the educational or journalism sites for lesson plans or tips? You might try the National Council of Teachers of English site as a starting point.

I also bet that the publishing companies would have some helpful guidance.

As a former high school English teacher, my advice this early in the year would be to focus for a week or so on some serious mechanics and writing skills in anticipation of writing copy.

I absolutely loved being on the yearbook staff! Among other things, I spent a lot of time getting my friends out of class on "yearbook assignments."

I was the photography editor for 2 years in high school. Jr high yearbooks were always "paperback" and high school ones were hardcover. JrH ones cost about $20, high school $30-$45. the cost of the book depended on how much we made in ads. the more ads, the less the cost of the book once it went to print. Its been oh..... about 12 years since I did all of this, but this is what I remember.
Full page ads were around $150 (lawyers, doctors offices, businesses with money)
Half page ads were $100
1/4 page ads were $75
1/8 page ads (perfect for just a business card) were $50

We also had sponsor lists that were just a list of names on one page.
You could have your name on the "Alumni" Sponsor list for $35 (this was all my parents ever gave).
And there were "Patron" sponsors for $25.

I went to a private school, so "fundraising" was a year-round thing. We had a contest in the fall among homerooms to see which students could sell the most in yearbook ads/sponsors. The homeroom that won got either a pizza party at the end of the day, or a breakfast party with donuts, juice, milk, bagels, casseroles, etc. If the fundraising event didnt make enough in ads, it was up to the staff to walk around town and ask businesses to buy an ad or at least be a "sponsor."

Ha ha! I was photo editor of my HS newspaper and LOVED to skip class to work on our next edition! Our darkroom was a great place to hide out.

I helped with the Yearbook when I was in High School 15 years ago. We used Macs and PageMaker, if I recall correctly. I think it's still around.

I work in the Marketing Dept. and we use InDesign. I have no formal training with InDesign but I manage to do ok. It can be somewhat of a challenge, though. I'm not sure if middle schoolers will catch on quickly...but judging how kids these days are so tech savvy, they might.

I've used Quark and InDesign (another Marketing person here :D), and Quark was a bit easier to learn. If these students want to continue with journalism/newspaper/yearbook in high school, it'll be important for them to at least be familiar with one of those programs.

Oh, and Jostens published ours as well. epchick, I would contact the publisher to get a better idea of what cost will be. obviously it'll be cheaper for a paperback yearbook with no color pages versus a hardcover book with lots of color pages.

oh, we also had a yearbook sale the same time we were selling the ads in the fall. If you pre-paid for your yearbook, it was automatically $20. if you waited until after the end of the school year when it was published, it cost more.

They are using Publisher, and from what I understand the kids like it (although I don't think they've tried anything else).

I was thinking about 'splurging' for something a little better like Photoshop or something diff, but right now i'm iffy.

We had talked about paperback books, and we'll go that route if it's more economical, but right now many students are saying they'd pay the extra $$ to have a hardback book.

my senior year, i couldnt fit the regular yearbook class into my schedule. but I had a study hall with a nun who hated me in the first place. every day i had study hall, i had to take her a pass note from the english teacher who was our advisor that excused me from the class for the period. the nun HATED having to let me out of her study hall. then i'd just hang out in the yearbook room, or walk around the school and take pictures, or go goof off somewhere. lol... good times!

Mine wasn't a class. It was just a Yearbook Club. All we really did was:
1. Vote on a cover design, layout, etc.
2. Take pictures at every event that existed at our Jr High.
3. 8th Graders went to every homeroom to vote on 8th Grade Bests (Most Flirtatious, Romeo & Juliet, Future Valedictorians, Class Clowns, etc)
4. Made sure names matched up with the students photos.

That was it. It was Jr High, we didn't do much! :)

OK, Publisher is very easy to understand (it's very WSYIWYG), so I guess that works for middle schoolers. The programs used in HS are what's used in the 'real world' though.

The only thing I remember using Photoshop for was image correction for the color photos, but if this is going to be in B&W, you shouldn't really need it. Plus, IIRC, Taylor corrected files that were too dark/light/contrasted/etc when we sent everything in and got our proofs (We would add a note to the proof saying 'page 4, image 2 - needs to be lightened' or something).

This early in the year the class can be spent doing:

-- grammar/writing assignments to brush up on those skills. Even though the submitted work won't make it into the yearbook it is great practice and should make the actual work easier later in the year

-- kids who are new to the class will need to learn the computer/publishing system. Kids who were in the class last year may need to learn more advanced skills that what they did last year. (not sure about this since we did ours on paper grids, but seems there are always more things that one can learn on a computer, and there were always kids in our class who could do more advanced things)

-- does your school do a theme for the yearbook? Your publishing company can help you brainstorm some ideas, and it certainly makes the book more cohesive and interesting. Fall is the time of year when you want to select your theme and start brainstorming how it can be incorportated in the various sections of the yearbook (sports, clubs, activities, class pics, ads, etc)

-- along those lines, typically a yearbook will have the same layout for all title/section title pages. You can start planning what that layout will be

-- there are certain "rules" when designing a page that have to do with white space, direction that eyes are looking in a photo, "eye lines," and where copy can go. This is a great time to have them practice making their own layouts with magazine photos, copy, etc. Someone above mentioned having an assignement where students bring in layouts that they like/don't like.

-- to continue, kids these days are so myspace focuses and used to things being uber-busy. Help them understand that less can be more!

-- I spent 7-12th grade on yearbook and served 3 of those years as editor. I will have more thoughts to share later, but the munckins are awake and I must go tend to that.

I was one of the editors on my HS yearbook senior year (staff before that). Each chapter had their own editor (Fresh, Soph, Activities, Student Govt., Sports, Ads, etc.) and there was an editor that overlooked us all. We had staff photographers, but at the time, they developed their own film. There was a yearbook class, but most of us were staff and worked during the 4th lunch period. (Our fifth period class was broken up into 4 parts: 2 parts teaching, 1 part lunch, 1 part free time in the classroom or elsewhere with a pass.) We also worked after school and some Saturdays and drafted everything on paper.

We kept a list of everyone too and capped the number of photos that could be in the yearbook, with the exception if they hit the max, but were in student activities and in group photos. This helped us balance the book with different students.

Every year we picked a theme for the book. We had some really nice books printed.

I do remember at the time there was a trend that less seperate pictures were acceptable, so we had to place pictures in blocks. Class superlatives also weren't current. You might want to do some research on current trends for what is considered to be a 'good' yearbook. I have no idea where the yearbook teacher got this information now though. My memory has faded.

This was 20 years ago. Maybe it would help if you post specific questions you have? That might get the gears rolling.

We sold ours for like $45 at the beginning of the year, $60 I think at the end.
We also went out a day of class every fall and asked local businesses to buy ads in it. Business card obviously cost less than a quarter page, half page or full page. Lots business bought them. We sold "ads" to senior parents as well if they wanted to include pics/baby pics and a message to their kids we printed those before the ad section.
I can't remember if we had Jostens or Wadsworth. I'm leaning towards Wadsworth. But they had everything set up on the internet by my senior year. We just had to upload the photos into templates. You could adjust the templates to your needs/likes or create your own entirely. This put a virtual yearbook you could kinda flip through online. Everyone was assigned so many pages to do (and certain ones)

We have a day at our school where a photographer comes in and takes all the club pictures & then a contract arranged with the sports photographer to send us the sports team pictures.

I'll have my brother get check the company and get back to you.

Ours were $35 for 140 page hardcover book in colour. We used the company Friesens that are actually located here in MB. Normally I wouldn't suggest a Canadian company, but most of Friesen's yearbooks are actually from schools in the states, in particular many from Texas and California.
Friesen's has a bunch of resources that they send your school, with great info on how to make a proper layout, how to crop pictures, how to caption pictures,...etc. They were really, really nice and went out of their way to help us!
Fun fact: The Friesen's plant here published the first edition of the North American release of the final Harry Potter book :)

My yearbook staff prided itself on winning awards, and we followed the format Raggedy Ann mentioned. In the longterm (and if it's high school) I would recommend sending some of the kids to yearbook camp. Yes, it's a bit like "this one time at band camp" but the kids learn A LOT in a week. And it wouldn't surprise me if they had a teacher's program as well. I googled yearbook camp and found camps and 2-3 day programs. Of course, you'd probably have to talk kids into going and paying for it themselves since you probably don't have the budget for that.

Our books were written through the entire year and published over the summer. You got last year's book in the fall. But it was a fairly large high school. I wouldn't bother with that if it's a middle school and just knock it out in paperback before school lets out.

And ads are I think important. We had regular ads (sold to quite a few businesses around town, not just parents' businesses) and then we had a couple pages of small ads the kids would buy for personal messages or whatever. This was a huge hit and always always sold out early. The process of sales and follow up was a good lesson for all of us (no matter what your department, EVERY kid on the staff had to sell ads) and was a fun project that got us out of school for a couple afternoons in the fall.

The sale of the ads determined how much color we could afford. I don't know the other details of our budgeting, however.

Good luck! Yearbook was a highlight of my high school career.

Talk to Jostens. They are the go-to for yearbooks even today. EVERY hardcover yearbook I have ever had (so every one since 7th grade), including my med school yearbook, has been Jostens. I'm sure they can tell you what you need/need to do to get started.

For advisors:

http://www.jostens.com/yearbooks/ybk_lp_advisers.html

Ours were Walsworth (brother checked for me!)
All hardcover. My senior year it was all color (b/c apparently color doesn't cost extra & we didn't know that til then). The software is really easy to work with & they give you a rep to come help you get started and to check up with you along the way.
Definitely recommend!

Thanks everyone for all your advice! It's given me ideas on what to do with the kids. lol.

We did hit our first hurdle, and that is the teacher who is 'helping' me (although I'm ultimately the one in charge) told me that publishing would probably not work, because apparently the school has lost money every year.

I told the kids already, but I'm trying hard to find a place that would publish it where we wouldn't lose a lot of money. We'll see what happens.


I actually was reading something about this, and I thought it would be great if the kids could go. But, the closest one was in Dallas (12 hrs away) and idk which kids *might* be able to afford it, our school is located in a more low income area.

I was definitely interested in Walsworth!! They were actually the company I was telling the kids about! The rep said they could try and work with our budget, but we'll see what happens.

I'm pretty positive they worked with ours. We went to a small school & were close to a loss on yearbooks every year. They're really not about making money. The rep we had was great. Shelly I think. lol

I HIGHLY recommend ad sales day if your administration will allow it. Kids get in groups and get assigned certain areas of town/businesses that might buy ads or have bought in the past. I mentioned what kind of ads we sold in my previous post. I think a half page ran about $45 for the ad. Lots of local businesses participated. More-so probably because they support the school than it actually bringing them business. A lot of them were ads congratulating the seniors and stuff. Fun for the students & actually brought us in money to help fund the book.

Anyone ever worked with, or know about "Picture This" yearbooks?

According to their quote feature on their website....they charge a fair amount (well compared to what I heard we'd have to pay for ink to produce it ourselves).


But Idk if that company is worth it (or if other publishers cost less, since no one has sent me quotes yet lol).

Awesome! Thanks for that info!

A couple of well-known and respected companies have been mentioned here, and I'd go with them. The thing with companies like Jostens is their sales rep will do a LOT of training for you. It is in their interest for your book to be successful!

Ask for examples of books that you could realistically replicate, set a budget and get the kids out making some coin! If this is a low income area, this lesson will be especially beneficial for the kids AND maybe get them through a door where they will one day want to apply for a job. The ads are about supporting the school, even though you sell it as having permanence that the newspaper doesn't, so they can be a bit more expensive. Hopefully your rep can help you set realistic advertising prices.

And if you can sell enough advertising, maybe you can off-set the cost of the books you sell.

if you need helping getting in contact with a publisher, i shadowed a yearbook rep at Taylor during undergrad. I also started out as a journalism education major, and was yb editor.. i think i have some lesson plans, resources and strategic plans somewhere, i shall have to find them if you're interested!

Everyone,
Thanks for your all your advice! It seems as though we won't be able to get our yearbook published this year. Our account has less than a $1000 in it, which isn't enough for a deposit with most publishers. Even if we sell ad space, we won't have the money in time for deadlines, and such.

It seems as though we'll be doing it 'in house' again this year, and I'm going to see how much the school district charges for book binding (to make it like a soft cover).

So far things have gone better. The kids decided on their theme (apparently there really hadn't been one in a while since they didn't know what a yearbook theme was lol), and today they are working on what the cover page will look like.

I'm still lost as to what to do with them the rest of the year until everything goes into full swing, but hopefully I'll figure things out soon lol.

Sounds like things are starting to come together. If this is a position that you will have next year then it is never too early to start looking towards that. If you need your bank account up, then start doing something to raise money so that you can meet that initial deadline. Perhaps start selling ads in the spring, making clear to your customers that it will be for the following year. Explaining your financial situation, along with your hopes for a bigger and better product that the kids are willing to works towards, should help with interest.

HaHa. Based on what we see here in GC, how about some basic writing lessions? Yearbook class is akin to journalism so this would not be an unrealistic lesson plan. Your kids (and their future college professors/employers) will thank you!

Yes most def! I had actually thought about that yesterday when we were talking about no publishing. Getting the kids to sell ad space above and beyond what they were initially told to do. Right now they are just trying to sell enough so that the whole yearbook would be in color, but hopefully they'll sell enough that some money will roll over into the next year.

I will have them start doing some writing assignments and also some video production type assignments. Some of them are just really unwilling to do a lot, they don't like me and I guess it's their way of "sticking" to me that they are mad that the previous teacher has gone. Oh well....the opinions and feelings of a few 12 and 13 year olds aren't going to bother me.

I can't IMAGINE being a junior high school teacher. All that drama! All those hormones just dripping off the kids. Now that it's clear (to me) that this is a junior high/middle school yearbook, I think an in-house publication will be fine. And I personally think kids respond well to teachers who expect a lot of them, so some of the snot-nose brats will come around, and you'll probably draw in some kids who are actually interested in learning and doing something creative.

I'd still contact Josten's and/or another publisher for samples of what they do for a junior high yearbook. They might be willing to help you out a little this year if there's a chance you can be a potential client next year, and maybe help you develop a fund raising plan.

Ha, it's actually quite enjoyable! I thought the same thing before I started working here last semester. Now I can't imagine doing elementary anymore.


Soooo things have changed. I got the principal to reconsider getting it published, so now it's getting published. We are going with Taylor because they gave us a really good quote (Josten's never contacted me back).

I was in yearbook in high school for two years. written had ours published by Herff Jones. The lay outs were fun do but don't let the students take control of the book 100%. Sometime times it is for the best that they do not get their way but also be open to some of their ideas.

During my senior year I was director of photography. If you need tips I can provide some once I get to a computer.

Strong work.

Taylor did a nice job with ours, and our rep was always available. Best of luck to you.