Yearbook Peeps....HEEEELP!!!

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

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).

[Always AlphaGam]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

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).

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.

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by Always AlphaGam

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 ), 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.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

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).

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.

[knight_shadow]

Originally Posted by epchick

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.

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).

[ComradesTrue]

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.