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How to write yearbook headlines
Not only is it a part of the dominant element of your spread’s hierarchy, but headlines also help organize the yearbook by providing a visual cue and structure for the content. An effective headline can help a reader quickly understand the content of a page and decide if they want to read more. (They should!) When writing headlines for your yearbook, follow these five guidelines.
1. Set the Tone
The tone of your headlines should match the tone of the yearbook, whether it is lighthearted, serious, or something in between.
Many advisers begin the theme development process with an idiom dictionary nearby to create a lexicon for the year. By incorporating keywords and phrases from the yearbook theme into the headlines, designers create a consistent and cohesive story, which ultimately strengthens your theme.
Take a look at this example: with the Treering Theme Stay Gold in mind, the editorial staff looked at all the phrases using gold and built out a list. They then assigned potentials to spreads. Notice how gold is frequently used, as are synonyms such as shine and glitter.
Considerations for Theme Copy in Yearbook Headlines
- Resist the urge to make every headline the same. In a book titled “Then & Now,” you can only have so many headlines with an ampersand. (Trust me, it was a first-year yearbook fail.)
- Use spin-offs to highlight the main concepts of the theme. Your headlines and subheadlines exist to bring the yearbook theme to life and make it an integral part of each story and spread.
2. Maximize Your Space
Focus your yearbook headlines and limit them to no more than a few words which accurately reflect the content of the story they introduce.
Advisers, here are some exercises that can help students produce stronger headlines:
Headline Critique
Have students work in groups to critique headlines written by their peers. Collaboratively, students learn to identify strong and weak yearbook headlines and develop a critical eye for headline writing.
News Scavenger Hunt
Collect headlines from various sources (some ideas are below in section five) and analyze them for clarity, conciseness, and relevance to the content. This exercise can help students understand the importance of writing headlines that accurately reflect the content and grab the reader's attention.
Headline Revision
To help students learn to refine their headline-writing skills and make their headlines more effective, have students write several headlines for a given story or event and then revise them to make them more concise, clear, and attention-grabbing.
3. Follow AP Style guidelines:
When it comes to all things style, the Associated Press Stylebook sets the rules for copy, abbreviations, and formatting.
- Capitalization: Capitalize the first word and all subsequent important words in the headline, including prepositions and conjunctions of four letters or more.
- Active voice: Use active voice in your headlines, as it makes them more dynamic and engaging.
- Punctuation: Limit the use of punctuation in headlines, typically using only a single exclamation point or a question mark, if necessary. (Personal anecdote: My undergrad journalism professor told me I get three exclamation points in my career, and to use them wisely.)
- Conciseness: Keep headlines concise and to the point, typically no more than a few words.
- Spelling and grammar: Make sure to check the spelling and grammar of each headline to ensure that it is error-free and professional-looking.
4. Wordplay Works
Make your English department swoon with literary techniques such as puns or alliteration if appropriate.
While "Football" is a straightforward and accurate way to describe the subject matter, using it as a headline for a story about the football team in a yearbook may not be the most engaging option. To make the headline stand out and capture the reader's attention, it's often better to use wordplay or a more descriptive phrase that goes beyond just the basic name of the subject.
For example, instead of simply using "Football" as the headline, you could use an alliteration that showcases your mascot such as “Lions on the Line” or "Touchdown Titans."
You could even use something from the story copy to tie the spread together: below this cheer spread's feature story is about the relationship between cheer flyers and bases.
5. Keep Headlines Timely
Consider the current events and trends that are relevant to the yearbook and include them in your headlines. From Homecoming (Game of Thrones) to personality profiles of faculty (How I Met Your Teacher), you can get creative in the Heartland (any location on campus, such as the quad, where the whole school gathers). See what we did there?
Find inspiration by looking at
- News websites and magazines
- Social media platforms
- Advertisements
- Books and novels
- Popular songs, TV shows, and movie titles
- Quotes and (appropriate) jokes
- Previous yearbooks
Following these tips and finding your headline groove will strengthen your yearbook theme and tell the story of your year. For additional writing tips, check out these blogs:
Six ideas to fill pages
Page count can be a dirty word in the yearbook industry. It’s how we compare programs or evaluate pricing. It's also how we wow our readers. Peppering in showstopper spreads breaks up the monotony of photo collages, portraits, and team photos. These pages also fill your yearbook with even more personal stories and unique-to-this-year happenings. (And if we're being honest, these last-minute ideas can help you increase coverage with ease.)
1. Interactive Pages
Drop-in yearbook spreads, such as about me pages make it effortless to complete the year's story. You can customize the questions and prompts on these fully editable yearbook templates and give students even more space to share their POV on the year. If you don't have a spread to fill, consider adding a sidebar so students can react to campus happenings.
2. Spirit Quiz
When Sequoia High School had over half a page to fill in their junior section, they added a teen magazine-style quiz. This spirit self-assessment featured eight additional students plus the school mascot while showing off what is uniquely Panther programming.
Make it Your Own
For your spirit quiz, determine which activities and behaviors define your student body and assign a point value. For example:
- Owning spirit wear +1
- Participating in a club +2
- Attending a musical or a sporting event +3
- Knowing the lyrics to the fight song or alma mater +3
- Serving the community+3
Use the scoring to affirm your community, even if it's a one or two. A simple "we want to know you more" will go far for students trying to find their way.
3. Then and Now
We’ll save the yearbook-as-public-record soapbox for another blog. Know this: anniversary years are a great time to reflect on where your school community has been and where you are headed. Schools also use building projects, campus splits, and expansion projects to add reflective photos and copy to their yearbook pages. Does this sound overwhelming? A show-stopper spread in your theme copy or your people section is all you need.
In addition to featuring changes in the building, you can write about or share photographs from
- Teachers and coaches who are alumni
- Current students of alumni
- Famous alumni (ICYMI: alumni are a huge resource)
- The local historical society
- Past yearbooks
- Blueprints
4. Pet Spread
If you’re new to crowdsourcing, or in need of additional coverage, start with a pet spread. If we’ve learned anything from #caturday and #dogsofinstagram, it’s that sharing pet photos brings us joy and is a natural part of our culture. Case in point, when our design team asked the Treering staff to submit photos of their children and pets to use in sample spreads, the latter had nearly twice the submissions.
When your students crack their yearbooks open in five or 15 years, the sight of their furry, feathered, or scaly friend beside their artwork and activities truly captures a moment in time.
5. Art Showcase Pages
Student contributions extend beyond the field, club meetings, and stage. Those creative moments in the studio or during classroom art time belong on your yearbook pages. Also, like a pet spread, an art spread is a way to include those camera-shy students.
6. Fashion Page
Expression isn’t limited to canvas and ink: Yearbook Hero Grace Montemar said her school included a fashion spread because it “allowed Yearbook Club to spotlight classmates from various grades whose fashion sense stood out from the crowd.” Featured students expressed their style and their inspiration with interviews.
We love how this school asked students from each grade level to come to the photoshoot in a white shirt and jeans.
Do you have more easy ideas to fill pages? Share them via social and tag us!
23 yearbook hacks for 2023
Forget resolutions, it's time to get to work. Our staff brainstormed the top yearbook hacks you can use at any stage in the yearbook creation process and packed this blog with videos, how-tos, and examples. Use the quick links below if you need to jump to a specific area.
Yearbook Design Hacks
Designing a yearbook is much more than just putting pictures on pages. Intentionality, storytelling, and branding are included. The following time- and sanity-savers will help you progress in your role as editor, adviser, coordinator, or yearbook fan girl.
1. Auto Layout
What if you could just drag the photos you want to use on a spread and they would magically be organized and re-sized? Voilà!
The best part? Everything is still fully editable, so if you need a starting point, you can continue to build your spreads with more photos and text, swap our images, and change the color of the elements.
2. Color Picker
You can pull the exact color from any picture to add to your design. This builds the yearbook’s visual cohesiveness because you can pull from photos or graphics to create your custom palette.
3. Layers in Design
Up your design by using layers to arrange photos, images, and text. In the examples below, you'll see graphic elements used as photo frames (movie night spread) and editable shapes used to organize content (table of contents). Using the forward and background tools in the options panel can help you arrange elements.
4. Custom Pages
Schools are used to offering senior ads as a way to congratulate students. Treering schools take it a step further and allow every family to tell their story with two free custom pages (and the option to add even more).
5. Missing Portrait Hack
"Picture day is the easiest day of the year," said no adviser ever. As hard as we work to make it a flawless experience and to capture every student and staff member, perfect attendance is out of our control. One way we love to see people included in their respective sections is by flowing them in with this spirited touch.
6. Advanced Portrait Settings
Another hack for your people section is included with the advanced portrait settings. Subtitles are a simple way to add marks of distinction such as student activities and honors as well as staff department or job titles. Other advanced portrait settings include spacing and sizing options.
7. The Magical Shift Key
Shift your process for aligning and rotating objects.
8. Printed Proof
A printed proof is an exact copy of your yearbook, and every school gets one free. Use your printed proof to
- Check the placement of cover art
- Assess the readability of fonts, especially the names on your portrait pages
- Show off your amazing work (more on this in the marketing section)
9. Picking Favorites—it's OK!
"Liking" graphics, backgrounds, and photos makes it easier to find them to add to yearbook spreads. To use your hand-picked collection in your book, filter by "My Likes" and "Team Likes" in the drop-down.
10. Pre-Designed Pages
Annually, Treering publishes elementary and middle/high school "Year in Review" and "Best of the Year" Pre-Designed yearbook spreads. These spreads include noteworthy highlights from pop culture and current events, and like all things Treering, these pages are editable so you can choose to replace the content with your own. Some communities prefer school or local election news, campus trends, or athletic records. Pre-Designed pages which include mention of our philanthropic partner, Sandy Hook Promise, are also available as well as about me, art gallery, and puzzle pages.
Get More People in the Yearbook
The best practice for yearbook coverage is to ensure each student is in the yearbook three times. Think one photo in each section: portrait, classroom, and activity.
11. Crowdsourcing Features
Treering’s crowdsourcing tools include integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and Google Drive as well as shared photo folders. Teachers, parents, and students can email photographs from their devices directly to event folders in your school account.
According to adviser Lauren Casteen, Yearbook Hero and leader of Treering’s Teaching Yearbook cohort, there are four reasons to crowdsource content:
- Equity: if you want your book to look like your school, your school needs to help you build your book.
- People are already familiar with documenting and sharing their lives via social media—it’s an easy next step.
- Your yearbook staff can’t be everywhere all the time.
- Less work for you! (This is our favorite.)
12. Monitoring Coverage
A big question we hear is, "Why would you want to tag student names when we're not doing an index?" Since our job as advisers is to cover all the students on campus, tagging is one way to track how many times students appear in the yearbook. It also helps you find out who is missing from your pages and craft strategies to include them.
13. Keyword Tagging
By using keywords such as event names and topics (e.g. AP Lit), your search just became that much more powerful, and the English folder less intimidating to navigate.
14. Find Carmen San Diego
Tagging by student name helps you easily find students within your web of folders.
15. Polls
Create polls to give a snapshot of the student body's preferences. Treering's software even makes the graphs for you. Expand on this or that-style questions or multiple choice ones by interviewing a respondent for more detail. You may be surprised why your star soccer player is a cat dad.
Marketing Tips
The second semester is when we see surges in book sales. Here are some hacks to get more yearbooks in more hands.
16. Free Yearbook Flyers
The price is right. So is the message.
17. Use Your Printed Proof as Social Proof
Social proof is one way you can positively encourage others to support your program by buying a yearbook.
- Show students, teachers, and parents how you are using the photos they submit by posting a PDF proof with their snaps in use
- Share sneak peeks
- Photograph your printed proof around campus as if it were a student (tag us!)
- Video your yearbook team swooning over their work
Hacks for Yearbook Advisers
All of the above definitely apply to yearbook advisers and coordinators, and here are few extras because you are our people.
18. Free Webinars: Yearbook Club
A yearbook adviser PLC? Live yearbook training? Technology pro-grow? However you want to sell it to your admin, we have it. And it’s free.
19. Styles
By establishing photo and text styles early on, you create a cohesive look for your yearbook. Because the font library continues to grow, it's nice to set some limits, especially with emerging designers!
20. Portrait Proofing with PDFs
Printing PDF proofs from the editor dashboard as soon as you get your portraits flowed is one quick way to ensure accuracy. Distribute them to the office staff and classroom or homeroom teachers for a double and triple check.
21. A List of Evergreen Content
Evergreen content for yearbooks is a collection of interview questions, infographic topics, and story ideas that can be used throughout the year. While we want to have a yearbook that reflects the current year and trends, having a timeless collection keeps your students working on interviews and photography and provides material to fill in on portrait pages, sports sections, and even in the index.
22. Supplemental Books
Sometimes club sports, special events, and alumni need a little extra. You can still attach a fundraiser, take advantage of our free design software, and enjoy all the other perks of making a Treering book: no minimums and a three-week turnaround from the day you submit.
Treering’s printed books for family reunions, church or neighborhood directories, scout troops, sport associations (rodeo, mountain bike, cheerleading, gymnastics), 4-H, school auctions, cookbooks, performing arts studios, first responders, and more.
23. Yearbook Hack Central: Treering Blog
(Shameless, we know!) We're glad you're here and hope you find more yearbook hacks by searching the blog or signing up for notifications when we post new content.
Happy holidays from treering yearbooks
Since 2009, you’ve trusted us to capture and print your priceless memories, and we reflect on this honor every holiday season. In addition to helping schools raise nearly $2 million in the 2022 school year, we printed over 600,000 custom pages in 2022—that’s a lot of joy. Thank you for trusting us with this invaluable task. We wish you all the best this holiday season and we can’t wait to get to work in 2023. Happy holidays!
What to Expect in 2023
- Semi-monthly training through Yearbook Club
- Design contests for editors and parents
- Your memories arriving within three weeks of clicking Print Ready
- New predesigned "About Me," "Year in Review," and "Best of..." pages
- Superior support as you design, market, and distribute your best book yet
- Weekly blog articles to provide inspiration and resources - subscribe and have them sent to your email
Staff pictured
Top: Chrissy K. (Customer Success Manager), Jason S. (Customer Success Manager), Jen C. (Customer Success Manager), Niri B. (Customer Success Manager), Brian M. (Director of Engineering) with Titan
Bottom: Melizza T. (Community Advocate Team Supervisor), Codey V. (Community Advocate Team - Quality Assurance), Daneesha B. (Community Advocate Team), Ramona E. (Community Advocate Team), Robelyn O. (Community Advocate Team)
Yearbook hero Katie Thomas mastered the late start
Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.
As a parent volunteer and part-time teacher at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School in Elk Grove, CA, Katie Thomas took over the pre-K through 8th grade yearbook, inheriting boxes of unsold books from previous years. Her first mission: to not waste people's money or the school's.
What challenges did you face as a new yearbook adviser?
Looking for a yearbook publisher that would allow us more time to complete the book so we could include spring events was a priority from the start. I also didn't want the stress of having sales quotas. Since I made the preschool pages with our previous publisher's software, I can appreciate how easy it is to create with Treering's software. That and the three-week turnaround really sold me.
At the time, I taught three-year-olds and I would transition to leading middle schoolers in the yearbook club. We started with the Treering yearbook ladder to decide what would go in the book and planned from there. It's still a work in progress on how we finalize page assignments, and for the most part, 8th-grade students create their section, and the 6th- and 7th-grade students do sports, activities, and class pages.
You sold 65 books in one week. How did you achieve that?
Really, I'm not one for pushing sales. I tapped into these existing channels to reach parents. Our school communicates through student council announcements and email blasts. When we neared our final deadline, I ensured parents knew it was the last chance to buy it for school-wide distribution, and if they waited, they'd have to pay shipping and handling. I had a handful of them. Seventy-six percent of the school community purchased books.
Also, joining Yearbook Club webinars helped. I've learned classroom management tips such as having a job board for students between projects and how to organize photos in shared folders.
What are you doing differently this year?
We started sales early and leveraged the 10% discount. We are also involving the school in choosing the look of the book: the yearbook club narrowed the themes down to five and the entire school will vote. The school’s annual motto is “Embrace Joy” and we will tie that in with the book to make it uniquely 2022-2023.
Last year, I grabbed laptops and phones to AirDrop photos to myself to upload because grades couldn't mix due to COVID protocols. I did a lot of texting to parents. This year, we are using the built-in crowdsourcing features: the students are creating their own flyers with QR codes to shared folders. The flyers say things like, “You could be featured like these photos in this year’s yearbook. Send us your back-to-school photos.”
The other big thing is I will order my printed proof sooner and try to get everything finished earlier.
QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED
Crowdsource content for a more equitable yearbook
We see it all the time on our feeds: pics or it didn't happen. The same applies to your yearbook. According to adviser Lauren Casteen, Yearbook Hero and leader of Treering's Teaching Yearbook cohort, there are four reasons to crowdsource content:
- Equity: if you want your book to look like your school, your school needs to help you build your book.
- People are already familiar with documenting and sharing their lives via social media—it’s an easy next step.
- Your yearbook staff can’t be everywhere all the time.
- Less work for you!
What Should You Crowdsource?
The short answer is anything: photographs, survey/poll responses, and stories. Here are some of our favorites:
- Pet photos
- Senior plans
- Student art
- Photos from away games and tournaments
- Classroom photos
- Field trip snaps
- Evergreen content
- Hoco/Prom-posals
Casteen puts it this way: "Everyone matters and has a story to tell. Storytelling is a way to incorporate different voices." Crowdsourcing for these stories is a start. Follow up with submissions with interviews to understand the process, history, or cause/effect of the photo.
If a Tree Falls in the Woods...
And no one shares a pic, no one will know you're crowdsourcing. Something like that.
To start and maintain a solid crowdsourcing effort, create a plan for a series of time-specific asks. For example, if you need band photos from the regional competition, reach out to the director and boosters before the event to prep them. Then follow up the next day. Think about your own camera roll: how long does it take your weekend to be swallowed up with the screenshots and snaps you take Monday through Friday?
Assess your Communication Channels
What tools does your school have in place to communicate with staff and students? RenWeb may not be the cutest, but if that's how your parents receive messages from the school, stay the course. Active social media accounts are also great ways to meet specific users, especially if the robotics team has its own Facebook group or the PTG uses theirs to solicit members.
Check out this article if you need to see some more winning social posts to help you crowdsource and sell more yearbooks.
How Treering Helps
Treering's crowdsourcing tools include integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and Google Drive as well as shared photo folders. Teachers, parents, and students can email photographs from their devices directly to the yearbook folders.
Custom pages or senior ads?
In a Facebook yearbook adviser group, I ran across the question: I’m confused by Treering users saying they can customize two pages for free. Don’t you start with an entire book of blank pages? Well, yes. And parents get their own two blank pages. And advisers can add in recognition ads. And… why don’t we break things down together?
Your Yearbook Your Way
We have hundreds of blogs on how to design a yearbook from scratch and how to use auto-layout features. Let’s focus on the two areas that are student-centric; we are equally concerned about giving schools the ability to capture their story each year, while also providing students with the tools to tell theirs.
Custom Pages: Personalized School Yearbooks
Custom pages are two free pages that are only printed in a student’s unique copy of the yearbook. This is just one way Treering aims to create a more inclusive yearbook for schools.
Treering’s personalized pages provide every student—for free—the opportunity to tell their story of the year.
“I created our custom pages to celebrate our activities, accomplishments, and accolades!”
Tawanna Edwards, 2022 Memory Maker Winner
“We take so many pictures that it’s hard to narrow them down. I usually start by choosing my favorites that give a good overview of our year, then ask my kids what information and pictures they want to include to remember for the future.”
Kirsten Megaro, 2022 Memory Maker Winner
Senior Ads: Parents Celebrating Students
When it comes to school yearbooks, whether it’s 5th grade, or senior year, promoting and graduating students deserve special recognition. That’s why schools have traditionally offered optional, for purchase senior ads in the yearbook. These ads appear in every single copy of the yearbook and they create an excellent way for parents to celebrate their graduating student and do it with the school community.
Revenue from ads can be used to upgrade yearbook equipment and fund celebrations throughout the year.
The Case for Offering Both
You might be asking, “May I offer both?” That’s a big yes, and here’s why: proud parents will always want to share with the entire school how thrilled they are to see their student’s achievements. Traditional graduate ads in school yearbooks handle the job.
Meanwhile, thanks in no small part to all things social, students expect the ability to memorialize their very best moments, memories, and photos from throughout the year. Graduating seniors shouldn’t be the only ones. All students, from all grades deserve a home for their memories.
Yearbook hero Nick Pasto engineers success
Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.
Meet the man who created Treering's new color picker. Engineer Nick Pasto grew up among cherry, walnut, and apple growers in Stockton, CA. In addition to his swoon-worthy homemade lasagna (yes, Pasto makes pasta) inspired by his time studying cuisine with Italian grandmas, Nick led the teams which developed many of Treering's other editor favorites:
- Recognition ads
- Spell check
- Marking pages "done"
- Polls
- Language support for Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew characters
- Alignment tools
- Package tracking improvements
(This is not an exhaustive list by any means.)
How did you move from the classroom to the backroom?
Back then, Treering’s design software was Flash-based, and that was going out. I saw a message that they were looking for developers to change it to HTML5. The opportunity spoke to me because there was a lot of overlap between my professional career and personal interests.
While earning my art education degree, I worked as a graphic designer and animator for my college. I’ve also been an indie game developer.
[Editor's note: Nick made Super Chibi Knight with his eight-year-old daughter who served as the voice actor for the main character; she's now 18.]
How does your background as a classroom teacher make you a better developer?
So many people who work at Treering are currently making yearbooks at their kids’ schools. I’m one of the only engineers who’s served as an adviser. It helps to have real-world experience with our product because I can see it from both sides.
The leadership at Treering looks for a breadth of experience to remain customer-focused and make the best product. The strength of our team is our diversity–our experiences help with ingenuity and problem-solving.
We build in a ton of automation and templates to make things less intimidating. You don’t have to know Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign to do desktop publishing for your yearbook design. Treering’s software is the bridge.
If you could tell our editors anything, what would it be?
The most impressive part of Treering as a user is the customer service.
Like many first-time advisers, I missed our deadline. The pressure of making sure kids had their books before summer was stressful. As a new teacher, it was too much on my plate.
I picked up the phone and just communicated with the CAT team and they helped me work it out by using my fundraiser to pay for expedited shipping. My students received their books on time, and I determined this is a company I am interested in learning more about. It was then I knew I wanted to work here.
Why I stopped publishing senior quotes
Unpopular opinion: senior quotes are problematic because they are unoriginal and full of risk. Before you click away from this perceived pessimistic view, put on your journalist hat and look at the facts. This position is not an anti-expression rant but a push to develop original, authentic content for our yearbooks. Here’s how I replaced senior quotes 15 years ago.
Three Reasons To Start a New Senior Tradition
1. Participation and Originality
A struggle we see from advisers is a small percentage of students submit their senior quote. Those who do use a quote from a movie, song lyric, or timestamp, not their own thoughts. That’s not journalism. These pop culture references may have a place in a module or personality profile elsewhere in the book if it relates to your theme.
2. Vetting Process
Do you know the periodic table? Are you fluent in slang, TikTok trends, drug euphemisms, and veiled sexual references? Does your district have a hard line on what is free vs. hate speech?
3. Senior Quotes Can Equate to Bad PR
A quick news search for "yearbook senior quotes" yields myriad results of senior quotes gone wrong. Allegations of bullying in the yearbook and “unlawful accessing” the online editor abound. Schools have even cut the pages from their books due to the quotes in print.
Ideas to Replace Senior Quotes
Thanks for sticking with me. Below are ways to celebrate the seniors on your campus and capture their voices (rather than Michael Scott’s).
Brag Sheets
If your seniors want to leave their proverbial mark, include their school contribution with their senior portrait. A Google Form listing all the activities, clubs, and teams offered on your campus makes it quick for students to click through. Partner with a department and ask for it to be the bell ringer or exit ticket for a day.
You could also include class stats, such as athletic participation rate, percentage of students in leadership, and volunteer hours.
Include More Quotes With Expanded Captions Throughout the Book
If your yearbook program is journalistic, it should have storytelling and reporting at its heart. Expanded captions include direct quotes. By using them, you are creating a yearbook full of original voices and senior, junior, eighth grader, etc. quotes. Here’s how it works:
- Identification information: who is doing what when and for what purpose? (Use present tense.)
- Secondary information: what is something you wouldn’t know from looking at the photo? (Use past tense.) This could be the result of the play or experiment pictured or the relationship between the students.
- Quote and attribution: include a direct quote from the subject that adds emotion, opinion, or information that isn’t obvious. Identify the quote with last name (grade) said.
Create a Survey Based on Thematic Coverage
Theme is king in yearbook. You selected it because it was the guiding story and look for your book. When you are developing your theme, create interview questions using this language.
For example, Rock Academy’s theme “Give + Take” yielded interview questions such as “What’s your take?” or “Give me five…” (songs, class activities, places you go on campus, etc.). Pro tip: use an idiom dictionary to search for such spin-offs for your theme.
For their book “Speak Life,” Sequoia High had a running module throughout the book called “Speak Your Piece” with quotes from students about a specific moment.
Sell Ad Space
Yup. I said that. When you pay to play, there is a little more consideration and propriety. Some schools offer 1/8 page to all their seniors and give parents the option to pay for upgraded space. (You'll have to get creative with the alphabetizing.) Others create a section with the index to feature ads.
With Treering Yearbooks, families also have two free customizable pages that print only in their book.
Stay the Course
Full disclosure: my first year, there was a little heat from students and a petition. By year two, students (of all grades) saw their voices in every corner of the yearbook, and no one questioned it. The standard response became "We have senior quotes on every spread in the yearbook."
TRL 2022: yearbook magic
We Made Magic Happen
Beginning the evening with a conversation on themes, a tour of the new look for Treering Yearbooks app, and a magic show, we transitioned to expert-led breakout sessions. The Magical Katrina wowed us with her close-up magic and improv skills.
Breakouts to Make Your Stress Disappear
Attendees had their choice of four breakouts:
Fundraising with your Yearbook
I’m the Yearbook Coordinator… Now What?
Teaching Yearbook
Selling More Books
Bag of Tricks
While magicians don’t usually reveal their secrets, we gave up a few of ours. Scan the QR Code below to access them.
Check out the full list of upcoming Yearbook Club webinars for even more training opportunities.
Yearbook hero Arielle Shansky's a homemade memory maker
Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.
Five years ago, Yearbook Hero Arielle Shansky took over the yearbook production for her Classical Conversations Community. Leading a team of three in Central Florida, she also manages an online community for over 650 others via the CC Yearbook Support Facebook Group. As the default tech person in her social circles, she enjoys helping other homeschool yearbook coordinators plan and organize their yearbooks.
What’s unique about a homeschool yearbook?
Everything is a volunteer job. There’s no budget and possibly no team to help. Most of us do not have a yearbook background and we have to create our systems from scratch.
That said, there are many opportunities to showcase families. Under each portrait, we do a mini interview so students’ thoughts flow throughout the book. We also do a “Family Spotlight” in our yearbook. Homeschool parents take tons of photos at home because that’s where the bulk of our education occurs. Normally, those never get printed, but with a yearbook, we are able to put those moments in there.
You said you love organization. What are some tips to share?
I track everything on my phone: running notes of things to do and hex codes I’m using. I can also monitor core book page progress and check book sales using the Treering app.
How else does Treering help?
The biggest thing is allowing families to upload directly to shared folders. I send out weekly reminders to our community so we get photos throughout the year. During National Yearbook Week, we are doing our big kickoff. We have a lot of new families this year, so our goals are to get everyone to log in and upload one photo. Whoever does that will get an entry into a drawing for a coffee gift card or something. Then whoever orders by the end of the month for the discount will get another entry. We are going with a Happy Yearbook Day theme for the kick-off (to the tune of happy birthday). One of the ladies is wearing a birthday hat and making a sign that she will wear around campus with a QR code to take people to the upload page and a box to drop their name in for the drawing.
The personalized pages are also great. I scan my kids’ art and the notes they write me to add to their books. I laugh because we only have one family photobook—the yearbook replaced that.
National school yearbook week 2022
With Proclamation 5703, former President Ronald Reagan made yearbooks even more celebration-worthy by setting apart the first week of October for “appropriate ceremonies and activities” to recognize the creators and the power of a yearbook program. Over 30 years later, National School Yearbook Week remains a time to reminisce and a time to look forward. In 2022, we are celebrating on social and at our annual Treering Live (TRL) event.
Week of Prizes
Win big during National School Yearbook Week by participating in one of Treering Yearbooks' five social media challenges. It's as easy as contributing a memory. You can also take the challenge of making an epic video to promote your own program, using the curated audio we'll share. Follow us:
- @treering on Facebook
- @treeringcorp on Instagram
- @treeringcorp on TikTok
- @treering on Twitter
There are no entry limits, so you and your yearbook team can enter as many times as you like. (We'd like a bevy of responses on Thursday, please and thank you in advance.)
Hashtags to use during National Yearbook Week
Share your celebrations and see what others are doing by using any of the hashtags commonly associated with National School Yearbook Week: #nationalschoolyearbookweek, #schoolyearbookweek, #YBWeek, #nationalyearbookweek, #yearbookweek, and, of course, #treeringyearbooks.
Week of Celebration
Imagine, yearbook staffs from coast-to-coast celebrating the power of a yearbook and the work our teams do. There's something to be said about a national week of unity for us memory makers. Remember to celebrate the yearbook heroes in your halls:
- Post profiles of your staff and celebrate their strength on social media
- Educate your school community with some behind-the-scenes edu-tainment
- Offer your campus 5% off on their yearbooks (Treering does this for you... just take the credit!)
Capstone Event for National School Yearbook Week
Treering Live is back to drop a little 24-karat magic. In this free, totally online event we’ll give you all tips, tools, and expert-led advice to make some serious yearbook magic. TRL 2022: Yearbook Magic will take place via Zoom Events on Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 4:00 pm PT/6:00 pm CT/7:00 pm ET. (Please note: you must have a Zoom account to register and attend.) In addition to a live magic show and instruction on yearbook themes, we'll have breakouts on
- Yearbook marketing
- First-time adviser tips and tricks
- Fundraising
- Best practices for teaching yearbook
And if that's not enough to pump you up for the new school year, check out our ongoing Yearbook Club training.