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August 12, 2025

New school year, new us

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August 12, 2025

New school year, new us

May 20, 2025

Traditional vs. Trendy

May 6, 2025

The 5 game-changing blog posts you’ve (somehow) been missing

January 14, 2025

How to build a yearbook staff manual

June 11, 2024

4 ways to simplify yearbook creation

May 23, 2023

5 yearbook volunteers to recruit

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August 12, 2025

New school year, new us

We’ve got something exciting to share: Treering just got a bold new look.

After months of collaboration, exploration, and a lot of thoughtful design work, we’re thrilled to unveil a refreshed brand identity, one that better reflects who we are today and where we’re headed.

Turning the page

We’ve moved away from the softer, muted tones of the past and embraced a more vibrant, energetic palette that speaks to the creativity and joy at the heart of what we do.

Our new logo is a small thing that says a lot—it’s clean and modern, but it also holds meaning. The icon forms a “T” for Treering, doubles as an open book, and symbolizes our approachable, flexible platform. It’s our mission, captured in a single shape: helping people turn everyday moments into memories that last.

Why we did this

This wasn’t just about updating fonts and colors. We took a step back to reflect on who we are as a team, what makes Treering unique, and how we want to show up — for schools, parents, and now, for travel brands through Treering Memories

After 16 years of innovating how memories are captured, shared, and preserved in the school space, we’re expanding our vision. Treering is evolving into a full Memory-as-a-Service platform, extending our technology and expertise beyond yearbooks to meet the growing demand for smart, personalized memory solutions across industries. With Treering Memories, we’re bringing the same intuitive experience, powerful AI, and just-in-time printing to the travel world by helping brands turn unforgettable trips into meaningful, lasting keepsakes.

The new visual identity balances the warmth of nostalgia with a fresh, modern sensibility. Our photography style is more candid and vibrant, our typography is clean and bold, and everything is built to work seamlessly—whether in a yearbook or in a photo memory book from a travel adventure.

What’s next

We’re heading into the school year with renewed energy, and now a look that matches it. But while our visuals have changed, what we care about hasn’t. We’re still the same team, focused on helping people capture and celebrate meaningful moments with care, creativity, and technology that makes it all easier. This year, we’re rolling out smarter tools to simplify yearbook creation, along with fresh new themes designed to give schools even more ways to personalize and elevate their books. It's all part of our ongoing commitment to making yearbooking easier, more intuitive, and more inspiring for everyone involved. We can’t wait to show you what’s next. Let’s make this school year unforgettable, together.

August 5, 2025

Cell phone ban: how are we getting photos?

With nearly half of US states banning cell phones in the classroom, many advisers reached out for creative solutions for collecting yearbook photos. Student cell phones can have cameras that capture photos as well as or better than traditional cameras, and have become a cost-reducing factor for yearbook teams. As more schools create and tighten policies governing cell phone usage on campus, we need practical solutions for yearbook class.

The yearbook’s mission remains unchanged.

Take heart, yearbook creators, when parent volunteers weren’t permitted on campus, we pivoted. This is no different. [FWIW, I’m imagining being on a horse, like William Wallace, as I type this.]

via GIPHY

The quick response

The easy solution is to grab some point-and-shoot cameras for yearbook students to have on hand or a few iPad Pros, if your school permits it. Focus the first few class or club meetings on the basics of composition

Another solution is photo training with a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Explore aperture (depth of field) and keep track of what ISO and white balance work for specific locations on campus, like the dreaded gym pics, which always look straight out of the 1970s with the yellowed floors and fluorescent lights.

If you don’t have budget constraints, check out our recommendations for yearbook gear.

Capital expenses aren’t for every yearbook team. Additionally, neither of these solutions addresses how to get you and your team everywhere—you can’t. Adding avenues for school staff, parents, and students to contribute photos will grow your reach.

Create a submission pipeline

Photo drop campaigns should be part of every post-event communication from your yearbook team. Did fourth grade take a field trip to the zoo? Reach out later that day to the parents and teachers who went for their snaps. 

Keep in mind, the easier it is to share, the more results you will receive. Also, limiting yourself to one or two avenues will simplify your back-end organization.

Yes, this approach might require more planning and follow-up than in past years. Remember, the systems you build now will benefit your yearbook program long after the initial challenges are resolved.

Photos from Teachers and Staff

While we cringe at asking our classroom champions to do one more thing, the thought of not celebrating their outstanding work is far worse. Work with your campus administration to add Google folders to the school’s shared Drive.

Treering's 3rd-party integration with Google Drive and Google Photos makes it easy to tap into existing photo collection systems to add more content to your yearbook.

There should be a folder for each teacher and school-wide folders for holidays, recess, specific school events, lunchtime fun, assemblies, etc. 

Photos from Parents

Many of the advisers in Treering’s Official Facebook Group say they have room parents responsible for in-class photos. Additionally, parents are often present at outside events such as concerts, field trips, and games. Partner with them for photos of

  • Off-campus event and athletics photos
  • Candids from carpool, pick up/drop off
  • First day
  • Any dress-up or spirit day
  • Summer and winter vacations
  • Homework and student art

In addition to a shared folder to which parents can drop images, share an email address. 

Photo folders can be public (shared with members of your school community) or private (editor-only). Each folder has a unique email address and link to simplify asks.

You can even send targeted asks after events: Hey Fatima, It was great to see you at the Science Fair. Would you please send me 2-3 photos of Jackson and his friends so I can include them in the yearbook? Thank you! 

Full disclosure, any time I see parents taking photos of their children, I ask them to email those photos to me on the spot. 

Shameless.

Photos from Students

If your yearbook program has a class or club component, creating photo assignments is one way to secure photos from students. The last thing you want to do is just tell a student, “Go take photographs of science.”

Many schools employ a beat system, assigning students to specific grades, clubs, and sports. This is a way to monitor coverage while teaching communication and project management. Students connect weekly with their contacts (coaches, teachers), find out what is happening, and take photographs of events.

The beat system also serves as accountability: if Erika’s beats have empty content folders in week three, the editorial team needs to redirect her efforts.

If you need help providing photo support, explore

The key to success lies in early, frequent, and clear communication with your entire school community. When staff, parents, and students understand the goal and their role in achieving it, collaboration becomes smoother and more sustainable.

Explain why the cell phone ban affects yearbook coverage, what kinds of support you need, and how you’ll collect photos. Then, keep the conversation going:

  1. Remind teachers of upcoming photo ops
  2. Update parents with specific photo requests
  3. Train students to use alternative tools and plan ahead. 

The more proactive you are, the fewer last-minute gaps you'll face.

July 29, 2025

Yearbook hero Mykel Estes modernizes memories

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

For months, Mykel Estes was just a cool teacher we followed on X. Known in Dallas ISD for innovation and student engagement, the former Teacher of the Year (2023-2024) created a bracket so students could vote on their favorite yearbook theme. Estes revealed the theme at Longfellow Career Exploration Academy's first yearbook signing party in a decade.

A reading and language arts teacher, Estes became the yearbook adviser after a staffing change. Instead of taking the proverbial reins, he rewrote the book.

How was your first yearbook a reboot for the school?

There are some things that they've always done, and this is a new iteration of the yearbook. We switched to Treering and even changed photography teams. Everything was new. And since I did take it on solo, I needed that. I needed that ability to streamline. 

The previous books felt like a faculty and staff heirloom, when really, this is for students.

How do you keep the yearbook student-centric when you’re a solo adviser?

I started with a bunch of y'all's resources: the ladder, dos and don’ts, and Camp Yearbook. And I gave the sample package I received to the outgoing eighth-graders and told them, "Look through here."

It reminded me of those old school toy catalogs. They marked it up. I told them nothing was off the table. 

Their suggestions became the collective basis for how I started the book. It was all over the place. The themes constantly changed, and that's when I had the “This isn't my yearbook” moment. 

The March Madness-style "Theme Throwdown" bracket was how I ensured the theme would resonate with current students. What I like, and what older students liked, may not resonate with our current students. This was one way to get buy-in.

What happened when the students at Longfellow received the yearbook before school was out?

The yearbook's a really exciting kind of moment in a student's academic year, and from the pandemic on, the yearbook never arrived before the students left. There was a palpable disappointment in the students not being able to have that shared experience of looking for themselves in the yearbook and signing one another’s.

We do a big eighth-grade celebration week to commemorate the last time the cohort is together. (We feed into roughly 20 different high schools as a magnet school.) I really leaned into that nostalgia.

The eighth graders got them first. Again, leaning hard into that's their last time here. They get it first. Then we subsequently rolled it out to the lower grade levels.

What’s next for the yearbook?

We are a career academy. We have a journalism class coming up. We have a photojournalism class coming up. Those two classes will eventually marry in a year's time or so and be the production team for the yearbook. 

Until then, I want to add student voices through quotes and make sure every kid is in the book. Every kid should at least be in the portraits. I want to expand that to a classroom and activity photo.

July 22, 2025

Yearbook color theory: what it is and how to use it

Color is more than decoration: it’s a communication tool. In a yearbook, color helps reinforce the mood of each section, creates visual hierarchy, and supports your theme. Understanding the basics of color theory enables you to make design choices that are intentional and effective, not just trendy. (If trendy design is your thing, head over to this blog.)

Keep this color wheel handy as you play with your theme palette.  

The Color Wheel

I can’t emphasize this enough: color is a complement to content. The right combination can make your theme feel energetic, calm, serious, or playful. Understanding how color affects emotions will affect your readers’ experiences.

All color theory starts here with the primary colors.

Primary Colors

Red, yellow, and blue are the OG trio. As you learned in elementary school, you can’t make them by mixing other colors, and they can be combined to create every other hue. A section opener with a bold red or yellow background can instantly grab attention—just keep your type simple so it’s still readable.

We all know yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple, and red and yellow make orange.

Secondary Colors

Orange, green, and purple come from mixing two primaries. Secondary colors are a safe way to add contrast to pages without them looking too loud. 

Bold and not as jarring as their primary parents, tertiary colors are beacons of energy.

Tertiary Colors

Mix a primary with a neighboring secondary and you’ll get shades like yellow-orange or blue-violet. These in-between shades are perfect for customizing your theme. For example, swap standard blue for blue-green to make a traditional palette feel more modern.

Coronado Middle School's theme, "Golden Hour" inspired their palette of blues,  yellows, oranges, and reds.

Color Harmony

Color harmony is about choosing combinations that are pleasing to the eye, and useful to you, the designer. Whether you’re creating a visual flow across a spread or building a full-book palette, these harmonies keep your pages cohesive.

I believe "opposites attract" was coined by an artist.

Complementary Colors

These are opposites on the color wheel, like blue and orange or red and green. They create strong contrast. Use complementary color accents for headlines, callouts, or graphic elements. 

This is a fun one to practice with your students: give them a color and have them point to the split complementary colors.

Split Complementary

Choose one color (yellow) and pair it with the two colors next to its opposite (blue). This gives you contrast without tension. For example, if your school color is yellow, balance it with pops of magenta and violet.

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for creating gradients with analogous colors.

Analogous Colors

These sit next to each other on the wheel and are generally harmonious and soothing. If you’re getting started with color, use an analogous palette to determine your dominant, supporting, and accent colors. 

It’s easy to look at these and think you’re limited to three. Using varying tints and shades for value contrast will expand your palette. 

Triadic colors make creating a theme palette as easy as 1, 2, 3. (Did we go too far on that one?)

Triadic Colors

Triadic schemes use three evenly spaced colors on the wheel. We see this with the primary colors. Now shift over, you have the ultimate retro palette.

One isn't the loneliest number when you invite tint to the party. Varying a shade by adding white or using transparency expands your palette.

Monochromatic and Grayscale

One color, many values: Monochromatic palettes have so much potential. Purple can have varying degrees of school spirit, while black is sleek and modern. They create contrast, demonstrate intensity, and serve as a base to add accents for emphasis. 

Warm vs. Cool Colors

Warm and cool colors affect how your pages feel emotionally. Look at the two athletic examples above. You can feel the difference. In one, you're sweating with the team and on your feet. In the other, you're maintaining what's left of your voice, sipping cocoa under a blanket with your best friend.

Likewise, use color to determine how the student body will experience your verbal theme.

Putting It All Together

Here’s how to apply color theory to your yearbook:

  • Pick a palette early. Choose up to five colors that support your theme and stick with them. Put them in your style guide.
  • Use color to organize. You could assign colors to sections, use colors as the backgrounds to modules or pull quotes, or with your headline font to show points of entry.
  • Make color intentional. “Don’t decorate… design” is every design teacher’s go-to for a reason. Be intentional and ask, “What mood am I trying to create?” “What color harmony supports that?” “Why isn’t this working?”
  • Check accessibility. Make sure the text has enough contrast from its background.
  • Balance bold and neutral. Too much color can overwhelm. Whitespace will always be your friend.

July 15, 2025

What Brandon Sumner knows about creating award-winning yearbooks

Brandon Sumner, President of Sumner Photography, wrote this month's "Picture Perfect Partnership" article. Sumner Photography is a California-based school photography company dedicated to capturing and preserving memories for educational communities. Through partnerships with platforms like Treering, Sumner Photography supports schools in creating exceptional yearbooks that serve as historical records and creative expressions of their unique identities.

In the world of school photography, few moments feel as good as seeing your partner schools get recognized on a national level. Recently, three schools that Sumner Photography works with, Coronado Middle School, Reilly Elementary, and Ladera Ranch Elementary, became finalists in a nationwide yearbook cover contest. This achievement shows not only their creative vision but also what happens when photographers and yearbook teams work well together.

How the Partnership Started

When I first partnered with Treering ten years ago, I was drawn to their excellent customer care. This fits perfectly with Sumner Photography's commitment to serving West Coast schools. What started as a shared goal to preserve memories has grown bigger than I first imagined.

School photography and yearbooks share the same basic mission: capturing and preserving memories for a lifetime. But our collaboration has grown beyond just taking pictures. Today, we're actively helping yearbook teams with their creative process, knowing that all the logistics and details involved in making a yearbook can overwhelm the very people trying to create those lasting memories.

The more we can make these processes easier—or remove roadblocks entirely—the more time yearbook teams have to focus on what really matters: telling stories, being creative, and making memories. This idea has become the heart of our partnership with Treering and the schools we serve.

Three Great Covers, Three Great Stories

Each of the three finalist covers from our partner schools tells a different story about their community and creative approach:

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Coronado Middle School had a fantastic color scheme that immediately captures the unique vibe of their coastal community. Having spent time in Coronado, I can tell you, this city has a special feel. Their yearbook cover captures that perfectly. The design choices show not just good taste but a real understanding of their school's identity and place in the community.

Reilly Elementary showed amazing attention to detail in their "Dive Into Learning" theme. Every element, from the biggest design pieces to the smallest details, works together beautifully to bring their concept to life. This kind of thoughtful design is what makes the difference between good yearbooks and truly memorable ones.

Ladera Ranch Elementary impressed me with student-created artwork that shows the incredible talent within their school community. The expressive eyes in their lion mascot design—created by student artist Fiona—show the real creativity that comes out when young people get the platform and tools to express themselves.

What This Means for the Future

These three covers represent something bigger than individual school wins; they show the range of creative possibilities available in yearbook design today. What gets me most excited about yearbooks' future is how they're evolving beyond simple documentation into true creative outlets.

Yearbooks do two things: they store memories and give people a platform for artistic expression. The finalists' covers from our partner schools show how art and design can bring up feelings that readers connect with the memories captured in photos. This emotional connection turns a yearbook from a simple record into something people treasure.

The Treering platform plays a huge role in this creative evolution by making sophisticated design tools available to yearbook teams without extensive publishing backgrounds. 

Something You Can Hold

In our increasingly digital world, there's something special about holding a yearbook or photograph in your hands. This physical interaction requires intention—you have to choose to engage with it, to turn the pages, to pause and remember. This hands-on experience creates a different connection than scrolling through digital images.

I'm excited to see how yearbook teams and students continue to capture our ever-digitizing world in physical form. The challenge and opportunity are in translating the richness of digital experiences into formats that can be held, shared, and treasured for decades to come.

Looking Ahead

The success of Coronado Middle, Reilly Elementary, and Ladera Ranch Elementary in this national competition shows the incredible potential that comes when photographers, yearbook teams, and technology platforms work together smoothly. At Sumner Photography, we're committed to supporting the creative process while handling the technical stuff that can distract from the artistic vision.

These three finalist covers are just the beginning. As we continue to partner with schools and support their creative work through our collaboration with Treering, I look forward to seeing how the next generation of yearbook creators will push the boundaries of what's possible in preserving and presenting their school memories.

The combination of photography, design, and storytelling in yearbooks creates unique opportunities to capture not just what happened, but how it felt. That's a mission worth pursuing with passion and excellence.

July 3, 2025

2025 elementary student art cover winners

In Treering’s inaugural Cover Design Contest, which—if we’re being real—was three concurrent contests, schools submitted their covers to one of three categories:

  1. School Spirit – mascots, school colors, and anything else that shows off your community
  2. Theme Development – an introduction to your visual and verbal theme
  3. Elementary Student Art – original art by K-6 students

Students created original yearbook covers using paint, AI, colored pencils, crayons, mixed media, digital media, and pen and ink. Yearbook committees gave prompts that were open-ended, fixed, and everything in between. While many submissions were the result of a yearbook cover art contest, others were collaborative projects. All were steeped in the tradition of promoting student perspectives and community. 

Grand Prize Winner: Peace Valley Charter School, Boise, ID

“Waldorf schools instill a deep respect for the natural world, fellow human beings, and the spiritual elements in all beings,” said 6th-grade teacher Nichole Murray, whose students compete annually in the yearbook cover contest.

Murray, PCVS dad Jason Ropp, and yearbook coordinator Gigi Murfitt display the entries in the hallways so all students can see them and begin to dream ahead for their chance in the cover contest. PCVS teachers choose the winners, and first and second place go on the outside cover. All cover contest submissions appear inside the book.

“The elements of nature are expressed, and our mascot, the otter, symbolizes intelligence, playfulness, resilience, and adaptability,” they said.

Both art pieces caught the judges' attention because they used similar colors and exceptional lighting–one judge kept exclaiming, “The shadows!” 

The. Shadows.

The cover art introduces outsiders to the Waldorf philosophy, especially how the art curriculum helps nurture imagination, emotional intelligence, and a well-rounded intellect.

“Our mascot, the otter, symbolizes intelligence, playfulness, resilience, and adaptability,” Murray said.

The Final Five

Ladera Ranch Elementary School, Ladera Ranch, CA

Fifth grader Fiona Martin captivated us with the color explosion and detail on her cover design. PTA president Joya Celik said the yearbook team at LRES asked the students to create a design incorporating their mascot “that reflected courage, perseverance, and attaining [their] goals.”

Their 2024-2025 school theme was “Go for the Gold.” Martin surely did just that.

Normandale Elementary School, Edina, MN

Yearbook team leads Lauren Dickerson and Becky Sertich created a collaborative project for 5th-grade students. Taking their inspiration from water bottles, Chromebooks, and everything else tweens touch, they asked students to create their own “sticker” design.

They “scanned and edited [each submission] to add a white border (like a sticker) and to make the background transparent so the ‘stickers’ could be arranged on the cover like clip-art.”

The result? An on-trend, completely original yearbook cover that shows the personalities and priorities of promoting students.

Strawberry Elementary, Santa Rosa, CA

This one is also collaborative: the front and back covers are creations from 6th graders and the local high school (shout out Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa) helped put it all together. The latter used AI design tools to expand the front cover art to wrap around to the back. On the back, they also created a composite of art.

“The high school students had originally envisioned a variety of student strawberries in the grass and eagles in the sky for this cover design,” yearbook coordinator Pamela Vincent said. “But [a] 6th grade student convinced them that one of the eagles could be arranged to carry a strawberry-filled basket.”

“In total, seven high school students and 11 elementary school students collaborated to make this cover a reality,” Vincent said.

Watchung Elementary School, Middlesex, NJ

Wrap-around cover, check. Multiple students’ art, check. This cover ticked all the boxes, and once we learned about the five-week process to create each self-portrait, we were even more in awe of what a PK-3 school produced.

“Students are placed in Polaroid frames to remind the third graders that no matter how much time goes by, their 3rd grade memories will remain the same,” Librarian Anne Erchicks said.

West Side Elementary School, Marietta, GA

The team at WSES made their 75th anniversary book an homage to late Principal Reid Brown's first yearbook theme. To convey “Shine Bright like a Diamond and Be the Best Bee You Can Be,” each student from kindergarten through 5th grade created their own bee and drew a diamond.

“Our yearbook team voted on using student art as the cover,” said yearbook coordinator Shelley Strack. “We also used the additional bees and diamonds throughout the yearbook as graphics.”

Strack and her team created contemporary art to celebrate Brown’s message. “I loved the use of new and old as a part of our yearbook,” she said.

July 1, 2025

2025 school spirit cover winners

In Treering’s inaugural Cover Design Contest, which—if we’re being real—was three concurrent contests, schools submitted their covers to one of three categories:

  1. School Spirit – mascots, school colors, and anything else that shows off your community
  2. Theme Development – an introduction to your visual and verbal theme
  3. Elementary Student Art – original art by K-6 students

We said, “School,” you said, “Spirit.” Pride in your community shone through on every cover. 

Grand Prize Winner: Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, San Francisco, CA

Mascot: Rainbow dragon
School colors: 15 colors representing 15 art departments

“Each of the dragon's colors represents one of the school's 15 arts departments. Those colors are carried through the rest of the design, appearing in the colorful garden that spans the bottom of the front and back cover, and in the text on the back cover where each department's name is written in its unique color,” said adviser Jeff Castleman, who also teaches drawing, painting, photography, and computer art.

This cover illustrates the adage, “Know the [design] rules, and break them.” Generally, we’d encourage a yearbook creator to avoid using 15 colors. Not Asawa Arts. 

They grouped warm colors for the sunset-inspired swirls, sandwiched between greens as grasses and blues in the skies. Each piece of flora has the base of the blues or pinks with pops of contrasting colors. Black lines hem it in.

A group of eight yearbook club students collaborated on the original illustration. The lead designers, both seniors, at Asawa Arts’ yearbook club developed the visual identity of the yearbook. They went from pencil sketches to creating their own computer-based line art. Six supporting designers (all juniors) filled it in with flowers, leaves, mushrooms, and butterflies. 

On the spine and in the dragon’s hands are roses. “The rainbow dragon symbolizes our school spirit,” Castleman said, “and the rose it holds represents our guiding principles.”

The acronym representing Respect, Openness, Safety, and Engagement is part of the campus as much as it is part of the culture.

Castleman appreciated the flexibility of working with his students to create the vision and fully customize the yearbook cover. He said each year, the yearbook team re-imagines the dragon, giving it a different feel, from East Asian and Medieval to this year’s psychedelic interpretation.

“We think of [the cover] as the crowning jewel on a bespoke book,” Castleman said.

Castleman's team earned a Treering-sponsored back-to-school ice cream bash for their campus.

The Final Five

Brooklyn International School, Brooklyn, NY

Mascot: none

“Our school is a very tight community as our students come from many backgrounds trying to achieve the American Dream, but not forgetting their roots,” Norma Gaytan said.

Gaytan’s students represented their classmates with flags and artifacts from their home countries.

Gloria Deo Academy, Springfield, MO

Mascot: Lion

This is the cover we expected: school colors and a mascot boldly proclaiming school spirit. The texture in the mane and near-watermark incarnations of the lion on the back adds texture.

Mid-Pacific Institute Preschool and Elementary, Honolulu, HI

Mascot: Pueo (Hawaiian Owl)

The drone photo in honor of Mid-Pacific’s 20th anniversary is impressive enough. We loved the before and after images.

Adviser Abbey said, “The students learned about how to use a grid to scale an image, practicing in art. We then applied the math to create a giant grid on our courtyard and replicated our school mascot with field paint.”

Montera Middle School, Oakland, CA

Mascot: Toro

Student art always holds a special place in our hearts. Montera’s cover art extended from the front to the back cover, making a bold statement of school spirit.

Olympia Regional Learning Academy, Olympia, WA

Mascot: Orca

The symbolism in the student art evokes powerful sentiments of school spirit. Both contest winners captured the essence of the K-12 campus’ mentoring ethos. On the front, a mother and baby orca represent the cooperative role ORLA provides. 

“We take our cooperative role with the families very seriously and we could not have the kind of school or kind of students we have without the role the caregivers provide, both at home and at our school,” adviser Rachel McKaughan said.

“The back cover also represents the playful spirit we have at the school with our many hands-on electives, she said, “where students are able to discover and express many different talents.”

From each submission, we learned school spirit is more than a sports team or school song steeped in tradition. It is comprised of community features: shared values and overarching identity. Thank you to the 300+ schools that shared their story with us.

June 26, 2025

Virtual pd: camp yearbook 2025

We always say we will get started on yearbook planning over the summer. Raise your hand if you follow through. (My hand is down too.) Camp Yearbook, Treering's two-day virtual yearbook planning course, is back. It's part large-group training, part small-group mentoring and idea sharing. And it's 100% live.

The goal: have the first six weeks of yearbooking planned.

What to Expect

Treering's Camp Yearbook is a cameras-on, all-in yearbook planning experience.

Event Structure

Both days are three hours of large-group training and smaller breakouts designed for you to get all your questions answered.

We'll provide the goal-setting worksheets, ladders, idea decks, and resources because we want you to finish Camp Yearbook with your first six weeks of yearbooking planned.

Based on your feedback, Camp Yearbook’s sessions are even more specialized:

  • Getting Rooted: designed for yearbook creators with fewer than three years with Treering, this session is focused on time-saving tips, design basics, what to do in class, and all the must-know info to create and market your yearbook.
  • Branching Out: for experienced advisers looking to level up their yearbook design or classroom pedagogy, this session is all about intermediate and advanced features such as creating styles, adding content to portrait pages, yearbook staff structure, and problem-solving.

Register via the Yearbook Club webinars page.

Treering Mentors

All attendees will be in a small group led by a Treering staff member who served—or currently serves—as a yearbook adviser. In groups specific to school style and yearbook team structure, you can ask questions about grading, crowdsourcing, club structure, page count, and whatever else you need answered. (Your camp counselors aren't Treering life coaches, but close.)

Grow Together

Breakout groups for parent volunteers, solo yearbook coordinators, educators, and club leaders mean you get meaningful support and specific-to-you resources.

Camp Yearbook 2025 FAQs

Your questions deserve answers!

How is Camp Yearbook different from Treering Live (TRL)?

TRL is Treering’s flagship event. During National Yearbook Week, TRL will have all the design training, coveted prizes, and organization inspiration yearbook advisers have come to expect. We look forward to it as much as you do!

Camp Yearbook is a summer PD program for yearbook coordinators and advisers who want to get more from their program through professional mentoring and collaborative idea-sharing. It’s a cameras-on, all-in yearbook planning experience.

How do I know which session to attend?

Camp Yearbook is structured differently this year: based on your feedback, we have the yearbook overview to support newer advisers and a second session to challenge the veterans.

BOTH have sneak peeks, specialized group training, and breakouts with Treering mentors.

What do I need to prepare for Camp Yearbook?

Make sure Zoom is up-to-date. This helps with breakout sessions and sound quality.

If possible, have previous copies of your yearbook and the 25-26 school calendar.

How much is it?

Free ninety free. Charging extra for support and training is not our thing.

Will I get CE/PD hours for attending?

Yes! Upon request, attendees will receive a certificate for six hours of yearbook production and classroom planning.

Can students attend?

Nope. Consider this a break… a working break.

Will Camp Yearbook be recorded?

Camp Yearbook is an interactive, experiential event. Recordings will not be made public.

June 24, 2025

Authentic activities with yearbook hero amy windsheimer

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Yearbook Hero Amy Windsheimer transformed a yearbook program on the chopping block into a thriving journalism class. After a year of co-creating Brush Middle School's book with a colleague, they opened it up for students. Windsheimer wanted the class to focus on both visual and oral communication skills. And she nailed it.

You truly collaborated with your whole community. Tell us what you did.

We used some of our yearbook fundraising money to purchase two cameras, and a local photographer came in and showed the kids how to use them. The kids really got into it.

At the end of the school year, I reached out to news and media outlets because I wanted to take them to a newspaper printing place. We toured Townsquare Media, which has three different radio stations in Windsor, CO. The kids recorded a radio intro and outro. They played with the green screen.

A couple of the DJs taught us how the morning show works and shared their career path. We learned about their college experiences and about radio advertising, which was a cool 360 because that’s how we started the year: Our secondary school sells ads together. For a field trip, I took my yearbook class out into the community to do in-person sales.

How did you make selling ads in-person less scary for middle school students?

One unit of my yearbook class focused on public speaking. We talked about professionalism and public relations. The kids spent a week crafting and practicing an ad pitch for local businesses. 

Windsheimer’s middle schoolers sell the ads, and the high school yearbook staff works to create the pages. Businesses opt to support one or both schools with their ads.

First, they went around and told any adult in the building who was interested in listening and sold them yearbook ads. Then, we had some simulations to prepare them to get turned down. I actually had one of the principals tell them, "Nope, I'm not interested," or “Well, I don't want to go as high as that route. What about this route?" 

When we went out, they had matching T-shirts. There was a process for receiving and depositing funds in the activities account. The kids also worked with the business to create the ad.

We have a restaurant in town that purchased an ad from a pair of girls and said, "Well, do you guys want a cinnamon roll?" They had cinnamon rolls the size of a small plate. A family-owned bowling alley gave the middle and high school staff an hour of bowling to close out the day.

How many pages of ads did you end up with?

We filled nine pages. Our town has many awesome businesses, and they are so supportive. 

How else do your students create the book?

It took us a while to decide on our the theme of our yearbook. They came up with five options, and they had to limit it to three, and then they finally decided on one. I told them to choose whatever style they wanted to make. Make it fun, make it creative, make it their book. And they really took off. 

We broke the ladder down into fall sports and activities. I assigned two kids per page. One kid would sit there dictating, and the other kid would be working. 

I rolled out a big touchscreen TV on a cart daily. Somebody would use it to work on their page. The best part about that TV was that it was big enough to see the layout easier, and it was more kid-friendly. 

We’d also use it at the end of our deadline: I would make them all go through and proofread and edit and make sure that there weren't any pictures with inappropriate signs or anything that could not be school-appropriate. Then, I would see if there were any other pictures that we could add to it.

We had four mini deadlines: October 31, another one at Christmas, at the end of the third quarter, and then, of course, our yearbook had to be in by the end of April. It was a mad rush in April to get everything done.

I don’t see many middle school books with captions. How do you do it?

Creating captions is really hard, especially when the yearbook kids don't know all of the other kids. I'd encourage them to go speak to a specific teacher and see if they can help out. We used all our resources. 

You equipped your students with public speaking, design, and sales skills. What else?

We have these big screens around campus that play a slideshow. I shared the Google Drive folders our students use to compile pictures of each activity. It’s as much real-time as we can possibly get. I watched kids stop and watch the pictures, and it's huge. 

They're like, "Oh yeah, that was a fun picture to take." Or, "Oh, yeah, that was a fun activity that we did. Oh, that was funny." And there are these moments somebody posed and didn't know they were posing, and we got it on camera.

Adding marketing to the list.

When they go into high school, I feel like many of them who wanted to be in the yearbook class will take what we learned and take it to the next step of what the yearbook looks like.

June 16, 2025

Top 10 reasons to join Treering Yearbooks

1. No Contracts, No Commitment

We offer a $0 financial commitment to all of our school partners. There are no minimum orders, no commitments, and never any leftover books. Parents and students can purchase a copy of their yearbook directly from Treering's sales portal. We only print what’s ordered, which means there won’t be any additional cost to your school.

2. Easy, Yet Powerful Software

We make things easier on you so you're not always the last one in the building this spring. The headaches from building your portrait pages and designing your book are magically cured with powerful automated tools and template-based, drag-and-drop pages.

https://blog.treering.com/yearbook-design-software/

3. Affordable Prices

We believe that every student should have the right to celebrate their year through the culture of the yearbook. We’re democratizing the yearbook and making it affordable for everyone by investing in technology to improve efficiencies and keep costs down.

4. Personalized Pages

Ever struggle to make sure each student feels included in your yearbook? With Treering every student gets two free, uniquely printed pages, so they can fill their yearbook with personal memories. Since parents and students use our template-based software to create their own pages, there is no extra work for you, the yearbook editor. But don't worry, unless you invite them, parents and students cannot work on the yearbook itself. That's still in the hands of you and your yearbook team.

5. School Fundraiser

We're helping schools regain control of their budgets: Treering gives you the ability to add a fundraiser amount to the cost of each yearbook. We also make selling recognition ads (should you want to) super easy: just set the price per size and let parents decide if they'd like to purchase. Since we only print the books that are purchased, your fundraising efforts can fund new laptops or a STEM program rather than covering the cost of leftover books.

6. Premium Quality

All Treering yearbooks are gorgeously printed in both softcover and hardcover with upgrade options such as gold or silver foil and embossing. We laminate hardcover books and UV coat our softcover books to provide extra durability. Moments are over in seconds, but memories—and your Treering yearbook—will last forever.

7. Three-Week Turnaround

Once you've finished designing your yearbook we'll get it to you within three weeks. Period. That means you can now include (nearly) the entire year's worth of activities in the yearbook. Treering Yearbooks are printed in the USA.

8. Collaborative

Everyone’s a photographer now, right? Treering makes it easy to source photos for your yearbook from parents and students by allowing your yearbook team to create shared folders. When parents and students create their free accounts to purchase a yearbook, they can also add photos to designated folders (i.e. Fun Run). You still get to pick and choose which ones you’ll use, but you’ll have a lot more to select from.

9. Online Payments

Yearbook editors tell us how much they love to design, but how little they like to collect money for yearbook sales. Treering gives your community the ability to purchase their yearbook directly online. We’ll collect the money and keep track of sales, freeing you up to do more of what you love: making a beautiful yearbook.

10. CAT has your back

Having a great business model and product is one thing, and sometimes you need a little more. A little more help to make your yearbook experience a great one. Your Community Advocate Team (CAT) will have you covered with 100's of videos and how-to articles, along with phone and email support. No more waiting for someone to come back from vacation to help you: at Treering we have a team of passionate yearbook experts to help you whenever you might want a little extra.

June 15, 2025

Treering's collaboration tools for your yearbook

POV is more than a social media trend, it's the call to reflect the diverse perspectives and students in our halls. So, how do you capture every student in the yearbook? Here's how we help you take control of crowdsourcing and collaboration with built-in collaboration tools.

Collaborate Using Shared Folders

After you decide what content you need, we help you organize the year with shared folders. There's no limit to how many you make.

We Love This Because You Can...

  1. Create one folder per classroom teacher
  2. Share email links to sports team folders for coaches and boosters
  3. Use #photodropFriday social posts to direct submissions to an event folder

Pull photos from Social Media

After taking a pic of our loved ones, our first instinct is to post and share it on our social channels, not with the yearbook coordinator. Treering Yearbooks' Facebook and Instragram integrations make it easy for your yearbook to get social.

We Love This Because You Can...

  • Add your chaperone snaps to a shared field trip folder
  • Build custom pages using your feed

Multiple Permissions Allows for Collaboration

Collaboration tools are a major component of our yearbook software on the design side as well. Yearbook coordinators and advisers decide the size and access permissions for their teams on an individual basis (we know there's no one-size-fits-all here).

We Love This Because You Can...

  • Limit folder permissions for student yearbook team
  • Assign a page or two to parent volunteers
  • Leave notes on spread and lock completed pages
  • Partner with the school photographer for the portrait spreads
June 14, 2025

Treering yearbook printing: it lasts a lifetime

Stunning, Sturdy, Scuff-Resistant Covers

Hardcover? Check. Softcover? Yup. Soft-touch matte finish? Mais Oui! Glossy finish? For sure! Want to give your cover something a bit extra? We've got silver and gold foil to add a little more sparkle, and embossing options to add a little more lift. Whatever you and your students can dream up, we create using a superior quality laminate to protect your cover.

And they are all printed in the USA.

Completely Customizable Covers

Your cover can be as unique as your students. With the option of an 8.5x11 and 9x12 size book, you can have the flexibility to get your yearbook to look precisely how you want.

Though we have hundreds of professionally designed themes at your disposal, including our Heritage Collection, we won't limit your creativity. Hold a yearbook cover contest with your community; let your students decide what it should be. Ask your art class to come up with something representative of your year.

https://blog.treering.com/treering-heritage-covers

Sustainable Memories

In today's digital age, where everything happens on screens, it's amazing how a high-quality yearbook can seem so... special. We print better than HD quality photos on our 100 lb, sustainably sourced paper stock. Because we care about both the quality and global impact of the yearbooks we create.

Bound to Hold Your Memories Together for Lifetimes

All our yearbooks are bound with PUR Perfect adhesive to hold each page safely in place for a lifetime. Both hardcover and softcover books will stand the test of time. What's more, our softcover binding doesn't crack when you open it, meaning you can add your school name to the spine to make it look great on the shelf.

Moments are over in seconds, but memories—and your Treering yearbook—will last forever.