Treering Blog

How do I get sports pics?

Away games in different countries or states. Middle school or underclassmen who cannot drive to away games. “Official” team photographers who do not play nice in the sandbox share snaps. Schedule changes… and no one tells the yearbook staff. Matches sometimes begin while school is in session. You cannot be everywhere. If any of these are why your sports coverage isn’t your ideal, try crowdsourcing sports photos. 

We have some actionable advice on how to get sports pics and the email copy a Treering adviser uses each season to successfully obtain photos from coaches.

Crowdsourcing increases equity

Diverse perspectives improve storytelling. 

Confession: the idea of non-journalism students having photos in the book was “cringe” to me initially. A junior named Victoria challenged me when we adopted a storybook theme. She wanted to add six Instagram photos to each spread to show all the stories on campus. We created a submission hashtag. From an opossum who raided the football team’s bags before a two-hour commute to the dance company’s trip being rained out at Disneyland, the yearbook team acquired stories that normally wouldn’t be in the book. 

Fast forward a few years, and a friend drops this truth: “If you want your book to look like your school, your school needs to help you build your book.”

Set up a submission system

If necessary, provide a checklist for photo submissions, including preferred formats, resolution requirements, and what types of moments to capture. Most newer cell phones—aka the ones everyone but my kid has—take good enough photos for including in your yearbook. Communicate your asks using social media, newsletters, and direct communication to inform the school community about how and where to submit photos. 

[Image: shared photo folders with dropdown menu]

Caption: Editors can create shared photo folders so teachers, parents, and students can email photographs from their devices directly to the yearbook folders.

What does your school use to share files and folders? Tap into that existing system with Treering’s crowdsourcing tools. In addition to shared folders, Treering also has DropBox, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Drive integrations.

Before each sport season:

Connect with the athletic director to outline your plan. Ask for schedules, rosters, and coaches’ contact information. If you do a picture day for all the teams (I highly recommend it), use this time to coordinate dates and times.

Introduce yourself to the coaches individually. Make sure they each know any deadlines you have or scheduled team photo dates. Give them direct access to submit photographs for the yearbook. If relevant, introduce the students who will cover that team.

Reach out to parents. Parents want to know if their child will be in the yearbook. Give parents the info to submit photos and give them a few ideas of what you want. Chances are there is a parent in the stands with a DSLR snapping away. 

During each sport season

Communicate Often. Please do not wait until the end of a season to send a “We have no photos of the X team” message. If you have no coverage two weeks into the season, it’s time to b-e-a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e!

• Have your photographers pass out info to parents with cameras at the game (Bonus: if your photogs are present, you will have coverage. Phew!)
• Resend links to shared photo folders the night of a game to parents
• Try the email strategy below

The email to coaches

Yearbook adviser Kristie M. communicates regularly to the boosters and team parents to get the photos she needs. At the beginning of the season, she sends info on shared folders to each.

She also works with the athletic director at her school to connect with team parents. The AD sends the email below mid-season to the parents of players. 

[Image: mock up]

Four reasons it works

With the right amount of positive peer pressure, Kristie creates FOMO while giving parents a pathway to participate. It ticks all the marketing boxes.

• It’s an easy ask: there’s only one “deliverable,” a team photo.
• It’s a timely ask: all the basketball teams have weekend games and students will be in uniform.
• It’s a specific ask: Kristie identifies which teams are missing and provides a link for parents to submit photos.
• It’s a targeted ask: only basketball parents received this email.

To read Kristie’s full email and adapt it to your school community, click here.

It’s more than sports

Groups such as the marching band, poms, cheer team, and spirit squad, among others, are also at these sporting events. (Heck, sometimes the band is bigger than the team!) Include them in your sports coverage by doing a Friday night timeline that begins with ASB and the facilities team setting up and ends with post-game traditions. Create opportunities for parents, sponsors, directors, and group members to contribute the same way you did for sports teams. Incorporate a way for fans to add crowd photos.

Again, multiple perspectives improve our storytelling.

Retro yearbook theme packages offer a nostalgic twist to your yearbook, bringing back the charm of past eras. They can transport you to different times and evoke a sense of nostalgia. Nostalgia in design is powerful. Fueled by shared experiences and moments with others, it reinforces feelings of connectedness and belonging. Embracing these themes can give your yearbook a bridge between past and present for your collective memories.

What Is retro graphic design?

Retro yearbook themes use elements that are typically associated with non-contemporary looks. From vintage illustrations to classic color palettes, we’ll break down each decade in design below. Consider this the Eras Tour of Treering.

2000s and Y2K aesthetic

Since retro typically refers to events 20 years past, we begin with the advent of internet-influenced design. Remember when we stockpiled groceries and awaited the digital doomsday? A yearbook influenced by the turn of the millennium is characterized by a distinct blend of futuristic and traditional elements layered:

• High-energy color palettes, metallics, and iridescent shades
• Digital distortions and drop shadows
• Abstract and geometric shapes

1990s design for your yearbook

With the rise of technology, artists began to explore digital mediums to create interactive and multimedia artworks. The themes of the nineties centered around identity. In pop culture, it was the era of Friends and TGIF, and design often incorporated references to these cultural phenomena. With desktop publishing becoming more available to consumers, emerging designers pushed the boundaries of traditional design rules to use asymmetrical arrangements and overlapping elements. 

A throwback theme from the 1980s

Famously, the bold colors and gestural brushwork of Neo-Expressionism dominate eighties design. It’s also the period that saw the rise of digital technology, a pop culture explosion, and a distinct visual style that continues to be recognized and celebrated during spirit weeks across the nation.

It’s not a 1980s-inspired retro yearbook theme if it doesn’t include some of these:

• Neon colors
• Geometric shapes, preferably layered with a glow effect
• Airbrushing and gradients
• Maximalism and excess
• 8- or 16-bit art

The 1970s' influence on design

Graphic artists of the 1970s made ideas and concepts the focus over traditional artistic mediums. Artists often challenged the notion of art as a physical object. The color palette of the time featured earthy and warm tones, including browns, oranges, yellows, and olive greens. These colors were reflective of the era's emphasis on nature and a more relaxed, organic aesthetic. While disco culture inspired illustrations with a sense of movement and rhythm, typography also showed some personality with exaggerated serifs, curves, and swashes.

Consider your distribution party for your retro-themed yearbook a piece of performance art.

Taking it way back to the 1960s

This was the decade of contrasts. Pop art and its bright colors celebrated mass culture, consumerism, and everyday objects at the start of the 1960s. Remember the soup cans? Later, major socio-political shifts impacted design and this period became synonymous with breaking away from the norm. 

A yearbook with a counter-culture theme might want to incorporate retro elements inspired by

• Mod influences from the Beatles and the subsequent British invasion
• Op art: those wavy lines and swirls you associate with 1969’s iconic music festival, Woodstock
• Eclectic or maximalist approaches to convey a contrast

Future implications

Consider this: your grandkids will produce a retro yearbook theme using key design trends from the 2020s: eco-conscious and minimalistic with sensory-friendly and accessible design.

It’s fall, and we’re all going crazy about yearbook themes. After your team decides on the collective story to tell, consider how you will communicate it visually. If you haven’t yet, use student art on the yearbook cover to celebrate and showcase the diverse talents of the student body. It adds a unique, only-on-our-campus touch, which we love. After all, customization is our thing.

Custom cover advice from the pros

The Treering Design Team helps roughly 200 schools annually with their cover issues. The biggest piece of advice: make sure you have enough bleed. This keeps art from being cut off in the scanning process. We always say to get those printed proofs ordered early; this is one more reason.

They also suggest advisers understand the technical requirements so your art prints sharply and vibrantly: 

• Scan the page at 300 DPI or higher
• Save it as a JPG or PNG
• Upload the image to Treering as a photo

Ideas for gathering student art

Student art is that simple: it’s art from students. Whether you source it through an intra-campus partnership or create a school-wide drive, the goal is to achieve a personal, unique-to-us impact.

Cover collaborations

Class projects, such as collaborations with art teachers, get students outside the yearbook room involved. (And really, this is marketing gold: you’re building a relationship with a group who are now stakeholders in your final project.) 

Yearbook volunteer Lauren D. shared how they went from classroom to yearbook cover with an art project at Normandale Elementary. The art teacher used batik patterns made by her students into creatures for their yearbook cover.

How to do a yearbook cover art contest

“I believe that students should be the driving force behind the yearbook's design,” said yearbook Adviser Julie R. She uses a cover contest to showcase student art. She asks students to use school colors and to “represent what learning and school look like to them.” Her yearbook team looks through the submissions and selects the one that most authentically captures the year.

If you share Julie’s POV and want to do your own contest, you’ll want to communicate the following:

• Dates for the contest: submission window, evaluation period, and announcement of the winner(s)
• Art requirements: paper size and orientation, medium, required elements (e.g., school motto)
• Judging criteria
• If you have any grade or class restrictions (some schools hold the contest with the highest grade or limit it to students in the art program)

Explain the contest rules in advance to avoid unnecessary tears, hurt feelings, and frustration.  Depending on the number of entries received, all can be included in the yearbook. Check out how these schools integrated their runners-up.

Student art on the front and back cover 

This is the most popular approach: the winner on the front and runners-up on the back.

Student art throughout the book

Think about it: if you asked students to represent your verbal theme through their submissions, why wouldn’t you use their interpretations throughout the book?

Tag us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X) to show us how you use student talent to foster pride in your school community. 

Ever flip through a yearbook and feel like every page was designed by a different person? (Spoiler alert: it probably was.) That’s what happens without a style guide. A yearbook style guide is your rulebook for keeping fonts, colors, and writing consistent so your book feels polished instead of patchwork. It sounds like a design hack, and in reality a yearbok style guide safeguards your theme's brand. Once it’s in place, your yearbook team can stop trying to remember what point the headline font is and get back to creating great coverage.

Wait, what is a yearbook style guide?

Think of it as a playbook and your staff training manual. Your style guide covers two big things:

• Visual theme: fonts, colors, and graphic
• Verbal theme: tone, voice, how you list names and grades

With those basics locked down, your team won’t waste time asking, “Do captions need periods?” or “Which blue are we using again?"

This guide, encompassing design and writing, ensures a unified style while serving as a coaching tool for your team during the layout and design process. Beyond that, it acts as a visionary tool, allowing early development of a creative direction for your book. By providing clear instructions on elements like fonts and colors, the style guide liberates your team to focus on what truly matters, developing coverage ideas, capturing compelling photos and quotes, and crafting stellar layouts. Again, it’s the key to eliminating distractions and letting creativity flourish.

Design: the visual part of your style guide

Often called the visual component of a yearbook theme, design is what people see. Here’s where yearbooks most often go off the rails:

1. Fonts
2. Color palette

If you’re going to do that, though, you need to cover all your bases and not leave room for interpretation. To do that, focus on locking down font choices, color choices, and how specific aspects of your layouts should look (like whether all photos need captions and, if you have a caption, what that looks like).

Choosing a font palette

With hundreds of fonts from which to choose, resist the temptation to use more than three. Everyone has a preference (#TeamGaramond). Here’s the thing, though. Constantly changing them impacts your readers’ ability to comprehend what’s happening, according to science. Yearbook fonts should complement each other.

When you pick them, define their use:

• Headings and subheadings
• Body copy and captions
• Accents, such as folios, pull quotes

‍

Yearbook fonts can make or break your yearbook design

Start here to use typography to further your theme. Learn how to choose fonts and add them to your style guide and improve design hierarchy.

Choosing a color palette

Focusing on readability is the first step to choosing font colors. The secondary objective will be using color to enchance the mood of your theme.

If that feels intimidating, using one of Treering’s 300+ themes gives you access to a proven color palette.

Verbal: the second part of your style guide

Design isn’t the only place things can get messy. Writing needs consistency too. Otherwise, your book will feel disjointed from page to page, like an awkward game of telephone. A few simple rules in your style guide will prevent that.

News sources, including yearbooks, use The AP Stylebook to govern writing mehcanics. Instead of investing excessive hours in an in-house style guide creation, we recommend leveraging the comprehensive AP Stylebook with minimal adjustments for your yearbook.

Instead, focus on tone, voice, using a simple outline. Ensure consistency by reviewing each section of copy against your agreed-upon style.

Tone

‍How should your yearbook sound? Fun and playful? Serious and academic? Pick one overall mood so your coverage feels intentional.

Voice

‍Think of voice as personality. Will your headlines be straightforward, such as "Basketball" or a little casual with some humor sprinkled in? Choose a lane and stay there.

Names and grades

‍Standardize how you list students’ grade levels. For example: Jordan Smith (11), Jordan Smith ’28, or Jordan Smith, a junior. Pick one format and apply it everywhere. These small choices add up to a polished, professional read.

Slang

Be careful here. What feels trendy now might be confusing in a few years, or even alienating to som students reading today. Stick to everyday language unless it’s universally understood.

Spending a few days on your style guide might not feel as exciting as brainstorming cover art or getting set up for photographing the Homecoming Court, but it’s the move that makes everything else easier. A solid style guide locks in your theme, keeps every page visually and verbally connected, and saves your team from endless “which font?” debates. Put in the effort up front, and you’ll walk away with a stronger theme, smoother workflow, and a yearbook that feels intentional from cover to close.

This year marks one of changes for Treering. To go with our new look, we have a new philanthropic partnership. Treering Yearbooks is taking another step towards promoting inclusion through partnering with Sandy Hook Promise. By choosing Treering to print your school's yearbook, you not only have access to crowdsourcing options and custom pages, but your purchase is also contributing to the “Know the Signs” prevention programs and K-12 instruction on empathy and inclusion.

Treering Yearbook's custom pages changed the way students tell their own stories: by providing an opportunity for families to upload photos and create their own pages in their student's book, we accurately showcase each student's interests and contributions. Then, crowdsourcing options widened the narrative to include more angles and perspectives from the year.

The "Know the Signs" programs include:

• Start with hello: For students in grades K-12, Start With Hello teaches youth how to minimize social isolation, marginalization, and rejection by creating an inclusive community that reaches out and connects with at-risk individuals.
• Say something: For students in grades K-12, Say Something teaches youth to recognize warning signs, especially in social media, from individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others and Say Something to a trusted adult or report it using our Anonymous Reporting System.
• Say something anonymous reporting system (SS-ARS): For students in grades 6-12, SS-ARS enables youth to easily submit safe, anonymous safety concerns through a mobile app, website, or hotline number. SHP’s highly-trained, multilingual Crisis Counselors respond to tips 24/7/365, engaging youth in dialogue to assess and substantiate the tip, provide immediate crisis/suicide intervention, and triage the tip to local school and/or law enforcement response teams as needed.
• Students against violence everywhere (SAVE) promise clubs: These student-led clubs empower students in grades K-12 to champion violence prevention in their schools and communities.

Join us to create inclusive yearbooks while teaching compassion and looking out for one another–together, let’s create a culture change!

Can a yearbook company save lives? We're sure going to try!

Some days, you’re so deep into the pages of your yearbook that you can’t figure out how to solve a problem staring you in the face. That’s when you need yearbook examples from other schools.

School yearbook examples can be the single best tool in your arsenal when it comes to helping you solve design problems, find fresh story ideas and layout treatments, and build a library of best practices. It’s one of the reasons Pinterest has become a super-hot resource for yearbook ideas.The problem with Pinterest (and any other “lookbook” approach), though, is that you’re never going to get a full yearbook. And you’re certainly never going to get it in print. Both those factors mean you’re missing out on a lot; namely, context and the ability to easily revisit.

Why not, then, build up a library of yearbook examples from a bunch of other schools? It’s a tried-and-true approach at some of the best school yearbook programs across the country, and it’s really easy to do on your own. You just need to know where to look and who to ask.Inside this post, we’ll walk you through the reasons you should be getting your hands on other schools’ yearbook examples and how you can go about doing it.

Why you should be getting your hands on school yearbook examples

We already hinted at the big reasons for grabbing yearbook samples from other schools, but let’s take a second to make it super clear. You can’t beat having a whole book, in all its context, right in front of you. Think about it: You don’t release your yearbook one spread at a time on Pinterest for your students, do you? Of course not. You give them the whole thing, in all its printed glory, because that’s what the yearbook is all about. Each page and spread builds on the other to create a story of the entire school year. While learning how other schools shape their yearbook’s narrative is reason enough to collect yearbook examples, there are others, too.

Let’s explore a few of them:

• Find new design ideas. It’s a lot easier to have your yearbook team work through design problems and find inspiration when you have some great examples sitting in the same room as with them. And we’re not just talking about spread designs. Other schools’ yearbooks can serve as a way to work through design issues related to everything, including mods, folios, and section breaks—with the added benefit of seeing how those designs complemented theme development, were used as templates throughout the book, etc..
• Spot trends that fit your book. A new yearbook trend seems to pop up every year. Keeping track of them can be hard, and figuring out which ones are best for your yearbook can be even harder. It’s easier to spot them—and know which ones you like—when you have a library full yearbook samples from other schools.
• Identify story angles and themes. You might not know the students featured in other schools’ yearbooks, but that doesn’t matter much. They can still be a goldmine for identifying story angles, themes, and everything else that goes into shaping your yearbook’s narrative. Granted, you won’t use this stuff verbatim, but it’ll help you and your team look at your yearbook a little differently.
• Develop best practices. If you’re lucky enough to collect a bunch of yearbook samples that your team aspires to recreate, you’ve just found the ultimate resource for developing best practices. Gather those books, ask students to find commonalities among key aspects of the yearbook, and list them out. Use that as your guide for creating your own, best-of-the-best yearbook.
• Create new takes on old features. Some features, like table of contents and superlatives, are practically synonymous with the yearbook. But that doesn’t mean they need to be treated like status quo. In fact, a lot of schools have stopped doing that. Using your library of yearbooks as examples, you can find those refreshing approaches and draw inspiration to create your own.
• Practice critiques without hurting feelings. Teaching your yearbook team how to conduct critiques is important, but it’s not always easy when the only yearbook you have on hand is your own. It can be hard to be honest when you’re worried about insulting your friend’s work, and having yearbook samples can ease that tension and give everyone a safe place from which to practice critiques. Do that, and the actual critiques your team does will be that much easier and that much more effective.

If these reasons aren’t enough, well, here’s one more for you: Collecting yearbook examples can connect you with other yearbook advisers, volunteers, and students you would have never otherwise met. Those connections, which could become totally awesome friendships or just people to give you advice and listen to your yearbook problems, can be worth more than any of the other reasons listed above.

How to get yearbook examples from other schools

So, here’s how you can actually get your hands on yearbook samples from other schools:

• PTA/PTSA Meetings: Every PTA and PTSA is full of involved, invested parents. Some even create the yearbook. Start asking around at county-level or regional-level meetings to build yearbook connections and swap books with other schools in your area. Even if the PTA or PTSA doesn’t run the yearbook, they’ll be able to connect you to the person at the school who does.
• Principal Groups: Most principals meet in groups, whether it’s part of a school district’s requirements or a professional development opportunity. Before they go to their next meetup, have your principal ask his or her existing connections to bring a copy of their schools’ yearbooks, so you can have them. It’s an easy way to collect a bunch all at once. (Just be sure to give your principal enough books that he or she can return the favor.)
• State Associations: While most yearbook advisers likely know JEA and NSPA, the national scale of those organizations might be intimidating to some. Instead, look to your local scholastic journalism associations at the state level. These organizations can be less intimidating, and are focused solely on your helping schools in your state. Check out this list to find your state organization.
• Social Media: You’d probably be surprised at how many friends and family can be in a position to help you. And how many other people out there would be willing to help. Put out a request on Facebook or Twitter, and you’re likely to get dozens of offers for help. And don’t forget about LinkedIn. Nearly 6,000 people list themselves there as being elementary, middle, and high school yearbook advisers and volunteers.

Getting great yearbook examples for your yearbook team isn’t hard. You just need to know where to look and who to ask. Start following our tips, and you’ll quickly build a library of books that’ll help you solve design problems, find inspiration, and create a better book overall.

Parents, school staff, and students all have opinions on what the yearbook should look like, cost, and include. That's fair, to a degree: the buyers and subjects of the yearbook are the key stakeholders in the yearbook creation process. Here are four tips for drawing (and keeping) them in close collaboration.

Yearbook collaboration tip #1: create consistent ways to contribute

Schools doing a Photo Dump Friday via social media or their weekly newsletter receive regular submissions. Using tools your school already utilizes is the best way to collaborate on photo collection from non-yearbook personnel, and a specific call-to-action yields the results you want: 

• Share your first day snaps below! You may see them in the yearbook. #photodumpFriday
• We’re looking for sport photos for the yearbook! Share here! #photodumpFriday
• Get your child and fur baby in the yearbook: post your pet photo below. #photodumpFriday

Another way to partner with students and staff is to create timely contests:

1. Cover design contests or, similarly, a title page contest that encompasses theme elements and expresses them in original student artwork reaches a diverse group of students. Some schools create a spread with all the runners up!
2. Increase your submissions for club photos while encouraging creativity with a team or group photo contest.
3. During an all school event, such as Red Ribbon Week or Book Fair Week, create a scavenger hunt.

Many yearbook committees assign “beats” like professional journalists. There could be a reporter per grade, subject area, or event charged with making contact with event organizers and gathering photos. Set a measurable weekly goal, such as ten photos, per beat to ensure coverage. With a steady stream of photos coming in, editors and page designers will be able to assess which students and grades are missing.

Yearbook collaboration tip #2: go pro

Identify working parents who want to help, and have one-off jobs ready. You may consider trading ad space in your yearbook and some social media shout-outs for their services.

• Work with a professional photographer to be a guest teacher in your yearbook class or run a photo booth at Father-Daughter Dances, Spirit Week, or Teacher Appreciation or even take buddy pics and fashion shoots.
• Join forces with an event planner to create the party of the year for yearbook distribution.
• Petition a local caterer or restaurateur to hold a teacher appreciation/yearbook hustling breakfast during a morning staff meeting, do a Taco’bout Awesome luncheon for students who bought a yearbook, or hold a fundraiser dinner to purchase books for students in need.
• Local journalists, newspapers, or news media may offer tours of their workspace for your journalism students.
• Ask a graphic designer or marketing pro to help create a social strategy for increasing yearbook buzz or to brainstorm ideas for conveying the theme visually.

Yearbook collaboration tip #3: play nice in the sandbox

We all know that mom/teacher/dad/coach who controls every aspect of their program, and is a nightmare to work with. Don’t be that guy!

Collaboration includes delegation

For your own sanity, and that of your loved ones, be like Elsa and “Let it go!” Some of us have a hard time saying no because we want to please others, or because we want to ensure a quality end result. If this is truly a struggle area, select a few small tasks to share with others. Maybe coordinating picture day is not your favorite. Maybe it’s creating the index. Who can you recruit to help with these tasks? Build your dream team!

Also—if your goal is truly big picture—you’ll want to build a lasting program, and continual collaboration with your school community is going to build a tradition that will extend beyond your tenure. It’s important to share responsibilities and knowledge for the future of the yearbook team. 

Have jobs ready and set clear expectations

Again, just because a person is involved with the yearbook doesn’t mean it has to be all-consuming—that goes for leadership too! Draft your volunteer roles with specific expectations. And remember to include ideas for working parents.

Some jobs with which parents can help are:

• Parent organization newsletters: get yearbook info in front of parents monthly
• Booster club liaisons: connect weekly with the biggest sports fanatics on campus to gather photos, stats, and scores, especially when sending a yearbook reporter isn’t always possible
• Class/grade reps: these people check in with classroom teachers weekly to coordinate in-class photos of projects, celebrations, and field trips
• Proofreaders and photo editors: clutch teammates who help ensure accuracy monthly
• Page designers: with Treering, you can assign a spread to a certain person or group
• Volunteer appreciation: find a fun parent who builds up others to coordinate social events, such as birthday parties, and an end-of-the-year volunteer celebration. If your school does an awards ceremony, you should ensure your yearbook volunteers are honored.

Campus staff can help with the above and:

• Getting an official roster from the front office to ensure names are correct and all students are in the book
• Sharing yearbook information on school social media and in parent communications
• Keeping the yearbook team abreast with events
• Contributing photos to shared folders
• Identifying students who need financial assistance purchasing a book

Follow up

When someone offers to help, because you have your plan in place, you seamlessly can plug him or her in! Not only is it disrespectful to ignore an offer, it also reflects poorly on your yearbook program. People talk. Let’s have them be your hype persons, gathering even more talent and book sales.

Yearbook collaboration tip #4: when in doubt, feed people

Hosting a round table dessert for student leaders or teachers will elicit information from many “smart cookies” about what key stakeholders would like to see in the yearbook. You may get new ideas for coverage as well as insights on yearbook buying practices.

Yearbook is a team sport. A “thanks a latte” or breakfast bowl letting volunteers know they are “berry helpful” will go a long way to let your teammates know you “donut know success” without each of them.

Bottom line: the best way to collaborate with stakeholders is to get to truly know people and their gifts, and show them deep appreciation for their contribution.

Confession: academics photos used to be my least favorite. There is so much glory in snapping an action shot from a soccer game—those are the photos that bring the likes and shares. Well, what if we approached classroom photos the same way? Using the tips below, your classroom photos can be just as exciting.

Tip #1: Focus on the reaction

Miley was right: it's the climb. When we showcase the day-to-day, it provides meaning. A-ha moments, in-process projects, and brainstorming sessions are just as important as the end results. Have your camera ready for laughter during a monologue or the face of concentration during a science lab.

Tip #2: angles aren’t just for geometry

Of the problems with "work" photos is students' faces tend to be pointed at the desk. My yearbook adviser used to say, "Zoom with your feet." Here are some quick ways to do just that.

Use your environment

Desks provide epic leading lines and a captive crowd adds depth and excitement. Above, the combination of depth of field and a crouched position shows the rapport of classroom teachers during an in-service. Use the crowd the next time you are photographing classroom presentations, calendar time, and open house.

Up, up, up, and away

The birds-eye angle (right) shows the same students and adds the intensity of their work by showing copious notes and study materials. The angle works well for groups studying together as well as individual students drawing or reading.

Tip #3: make a list and check it twice

Because you can’t be everywhere, enlisting the help of your teacher comrades is one way to increase both content and coverage. Share this list of ideas with faculty and staff to give them ideas (or else, you’ll be drowning in group shots).

Just like the yearbook represents the entire school community, the academics section highlights the bulk of a student's in-school day. It shows the distinctives of each department. It showcases students’ work. It covers the diverse learners on campus. You can divide coverage by

• Grade
• Subject
• Quarter

Special considerations for including exceptional learners

To paraphrase the Student Press Law Center, yearbooks cannot separate or denote students as members of special education programs because it is a part of their private student record. Always check with your district to see if they have a specific policy.

So, grab your yearbook team and get in the classroom to apply these photo tips. Your academics section will thank you.

An agenda slide is more than an organizational tool: it creates a method to maintain accountability in your yearbook class.

What goes on an agenda slide?

You could write the items below on your whiteboard easy peasy. Many advisers told us they prefer to create their agenda digitally because it provides a record for administration and parents (hello, accreditation year). The following year, it simply needs basic edits to remain current. Give yourself bonus points if you adapt the slides to your yearbook theme and/or color scheme. 

Because a structured daily agenda slide helps your yearbook staff understand what to expect during the class or club session, we like to include these five things:

1. Date and class information
2. Learning objectives or goals for the day's lesson
3. Class agenda
4. Deliverables
5. Announcements and reminders

If your yearbook program is a club, and you do not need CTE or ELA standards, use a brief description of the yearbook club's purpose or mission to keep activities aligned.

Two examples of organization and accountability

Obvious statement: the yearbook is a big project. By creating and posting an agenda, you can chunk the work to make it realistic. 

Example 1: project-based agenda

The example above clearly identifies the learning objective and how they complement the broader yearbook project. The stand-up meeting includes deadline setting, content creation, and photo assignments. This method helps all editors and support staff see how their section contributes to the entire yearbook.

Example 2: time-management agenda

Many clubs meet twice a week, so chunking the work time helps the team know the purpose of their time together. That sounds simplistic, and we’ve seen strategies such as Deep Work or the Pomodoro Technique highlight short periods of focus to yield more valuable results. Less is more. Reserved space on the agenda slide also informs about upcoming deadlines, events, and opportunities.

If your campus or district requires documentation, a deck of yearbook agenda slides complements your curriculum map. It ensures both your production and learning outcomes align. (True story: administrators love them.) They also simplify preparing for sub plans and absent students’ catch-up bins: students come to expect your established routine. 

‍

Picture day either makes you call out ill or grab disposable combs and a spray bottle for flyaway patrol. With portraits making up 40-60% of a yearbook, anything Treering can do to make it easier on you is a win-win-win. It’s the bulk of most elementary school yearbooks. It’s where there’s the most potential for error. It’s where you’ll prevail this year. 

1. Find a yearbook photographer

When interviewing a yearbook photographer, be sure to learn about the photographer's

• Experience: How long have you been in business?
• Security measure: How do you vet employees? What does your background check process entail?
• Training: What does your photographer training look like?
• Dependability: Every school photography company is experiencing staffing issues. Ask if they are prepared.
• Turnaround time: What is the time from picture day to delivery? How do I get my yearbook export?
• Longevity: How long are the photos available?

Consider all factors—quality of work, professionalism, cost, and feedback from local references—in your search.

2. Prep for picture day 

As you create a ladder and assign spreads to portrait pages, your photographer prepares by organizing students in their database to produce PSPA-formatted portraits for the yearbook. (PSPA is the fancy abbreviation for the industry-standard way portrait photographers and yearbook software communicate.)

School photographers need accurate information well before they arrive at your school. If you don’t receive a template, ask what specific details they require and their preferred format. 

This is so important. For the yearbook, traditionally all photographers would need name, grade, and teacher. Photographers use school data provided to the photographer to create all school services including a PSPA file, such as IDs. The more info the better! This means your picture day photographer may give you a template with room for house names or team names, room numbers, and staff salutations.

3. Go from picture day to yearbook pages

Make sure you know your photographer’s expected turnaround time before scheduling your school picture day. Most need 3 to 4 weeks. Given that time frame, if you schedule picture day in mid-September and hold a retake day in November, you’ll have all the portraits for the yearbook before winter break. 

This syncs nicely with winter webinars by Treering’s Yearbook Club to help you flow your portraits. And with Treering’s three-week turnaround, you’ll have time to add any students who join in the second semester.

4. Create your schedule… and share it early

Picture day should be on the school calendar from the beginning so parents and teachers can plan. Work with admin to share the schedule with staff and parents at least a week in advance. 

The best scheduling advice we can give is paraphrased from “Toy Story 2.”

^{Toy Story Pixar GIF}

At the high school level, getting students and faculty through the queue may feel like you’re on the logistics staff for Major League Baseball or in an air traffic control tower. Breathe deep. You’ve got this.

When creating the picture day schedule, allow the appropriate time for each class. The guidelines below should help.

• Pre-K and Kindergarten: Plan for upwards of one minute per student. (About 25 minutes for a 20-30 student class.)
• Grades 1-5: Plan for 45-55 seconds per student. (About 20 minutes per 20-30 student class.)
• Middle and High School: Plan for 45 seconds per student. (About 18 minutes per 20-30 student class.)

Your photography company should send one photographer for every 250 students.

5. Recruit picture day volunteers

If your school allows it, parents can help prep students for the camera. Remember flyaway mom in the opening paragraph? Chances are, you have a parent on campus who can assist in getting kids ready for their portraits and reduce the time each student spends with the photographer. This also helps reduce the picture day stress on teachers. (By the way, a few boxes of doughnuts by the mailboxes in the office will go a long way.)

Picture day volunteers can also help relieve tensions. PTA mom Abby dresses up each year to help students smile. 

Some photo companies offer free or reduced picture packages as a thank you. Remember to negotiate that ahead of time.

When these elements come together, picture day can transform from a hectic event into a smooth operation. You’ll receive great photos and provide a stress-free process.

You thought yearbook class was just putting pictures on pages. Then a roster arrived. Then the expectations to meet state and national standards for ELA, CTE, and 21st Century Learning.  Cue migraine.

The yearbook heroes at Treering know the difficulties new advisers face (shameless plug: that’s why we’ve created a contract-free, flexible yearbook solution) and we’ve created six weeks-worth of material for your yearbook class.

If it’s your first year advising, select one or two areas on which to focus. As your program develops, deepen those areas and add a new growth target.

For example, year one, you may want to focus on theme development and photography. Year two, expand those areas and add storytelling captions. Year three, further develop your writers with feature stories. Repeat after me, “I won’t do it all! I won’t do it all!”

Week 1 goal: build a mission-centered yearbook staff

Teambuilding

Every day, do something to help your team grow in familiarity with one another. Start with something simple, such as Birthday Lineup followed by some cake. To reinforce all the new names, Hero-Shambo is a raucous way to inspire team spirit while putting names to the faces.

Spend some time understanding personalities as well. Free online tests can provide discussion start points. Debrief either by grouping students who scored similarly and have them discuss what resonated with them and potential misconceptions. Groups could even create a poster or mood board reflecting their strengths.

Theme development

As your year, and your book, should be focused on telling the story, theme development is top priority. Start with a SWOT analysis. Then list all the changes, new initiatives, and differences that make this school year stand out from the last five. Are you doing a building project? Did you add an international program? Is there new leadership? Did you merge with another school? Is this the first senior class that’s gone all the way through from kindergarten?

How can you convey this story this year?

Many times, our students come up with a catch phrase and want it to dictate the content. Your story—whether you have a visually strong, photographic book, or a journalistic yearbook full of features—should lead your look.  Our Yearbook Theme Curriculum Module can help.

Photography

There are five beginning photo exercises in Treering's blog. Spend some time getting to know your team's cameras before jumping in. This may also be time to involve the editorial staff: assign an exercise for each to learn and facilitate.

Reporting

Start asking your yearbook students a question of the day. (If you have a large class, you may want to poll 3-5 students each period for time.) Before the next class, your yearbook students should ask that same question to three other students (no repeats). If you have 12 yearbook students, that’s 36 student quotes you can include in a sidebar each day, 180 each week! Use a Google form to input responses and track respondents. This not only increases coverage possibilities, but it warms up your student body to be pursued and peppered by your yearbook students!

Week 2 goal: set and slay yearbook goals

Photography and design

Begin the week with a photo scavenger hunt. Use the results to introduce your procedures for file naming conventions, uploading, and tagging. Model how to design a spread with their snaps.

Introduce yearbook vocabulary then grab some magazines to play a grown-up version of show and tell. Reward students who can find eyelines, ledes, and serif vs. san serifs fonts!

Further demonstrate the principles of design and get in your yearbook software to recreate some of the layouts you loved in the magazines. You should be in your design application 2/3 of the week so your staff gets comfortable.

Teambuilding

Since focus this week is on goal-setting, use communication games such as Blind Polygon or adapt Minefield for your classroom. In both scenarios, identify the goal and evaluate what worked and what didn’t when you are finished. 

Revisit the personality profiles from week one—what effect did they have on students’ problem-solving and communication?

Theme development

It’s also time to revisit your SWOT and story-of-the-year brainstorm. Think of your senses: how does it feel, sound, smell, and look? (Don't worry, we're not going to encourage tasting your yearbook!)

Determine tangible ways to convey the story of your year. In the Design Module, we talk about color and fonts. Both are two key visuals to harness the essence of your theme.

For example, If your yearbook theme is Move Mountains, you are going to want to use colors and fonts that are bold, signifying strength.

Reporting

Continue your question of the week, and evaluate the process. Where are students struggling? 
If fear is a hindrance, watch Jia Jiang: What I learned from 100 days of rejection. If it’s procrastination, watch Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. In your debrief, develop concrete strategies such as a few scripted lines or a schedule.

Marketing

Make it a point to consistently market your book and your program. It's possible to plant proverbial seeds for next year's staff in September!

Week 3 goal: build your team’s toolbox

Teambuilding

Begin holding weekly staff meetings. In these meetings, discuss event and photo assignments for the week, when your next deadline is, and have every staff member give a 15-second update of their work. A simple, “Here’s what I’m doing, and here’s what I need to do” will keep it focused. You're building a culture of accountability.

Editors can also lead the meeting by using the first 15 minutes of class to develop a skill: photographing in classrooms with fluorescent lights, sharpening images in Photoshop, cropping images, etc.

Reporting

Evaluate the question of the day. Have students put last week's action plan into play? What percentage of the student body has been asked? Discuss with your staff where you will begin incorporating these quotes and what questions you can ask to tie-in with your yearbook theme.

Start a word graveyard: on a prominent bulletin board, list “dead” words and phrases. Have a reason why you’re dumping one: for example, many athletes will say their team is a “family” as will ASB, the dance company, the math department, etc. Teach interview skills to develop this: what drives your bond? Tell me a way a teammate was dependable. What traditions do you have that make you like a family? Get the story.

Design

Develop your style guide and decide which elements (e.g. bleed, color overlays) will enhance the story you are telling this year. Your editorial staff should begin building templates in your design software. By the end of the third week, your entire team should be comfortable doing basic tasks in your design platform.

Week 4 goal: progress!

Teambuilding

Using comics or stock photos, create Comic Creations. Then, with a partner, students should list three questions they could have asked to get the quote. Use your word graveyard and our Five Common Topics as needed to build stronger questions.

Teach the expanded caption using the Comic Creations quotes. You may want to first show NSPA’s Terrible Leads as a non-example before modeling your own yearbook gold.

Theme development and design

Evaluate your style guide and templates using NSPA’s design checklist; adjust as necessary. This is a good time to pause and remember our mantra: “I won’t do it all! I won’t do it all!”

Use an idiom dictionary to create spin-offs for your theme. Let’s return to our Move Mountains theme. For recurring modules, you could use:

Photography

By now, your students should be photographing class activities, school events, and sports practices and competitions regularly. Have your editorial team select some photos of the month to show on a projector. Discuss, as a group, what made the photographs standout in their composition and storytelling. Elicit advice from the photographer. Share top photos on social media with a call to action: “Want to see more? Buy a Yearbook!

^{A post shared by Treering (@treeringcorp)}

Social media serves a double purpose: market your program and your yearbook!

Marketing

Create a social media calendar and assign posts to students. Each post should be approved, in writing, by an editor and another student before going live. You may want to utilize a group messaging system or a shared document to track approval and content.

Week 5 goal: momentum

Teambuilding

Before this week’s staff meeting, ask an editor and a staff member to each select a Yearbook Hero to celebrate. Share the love on social.

Introduce peer evaluation by partnering two students, equipping them with a rubric, and asking them to evaluate a strong example of design. Because it’s “easy” to critique something weak, this forces students to understand why a layout works. 

Allow students to sign up for one-on-one sessions with you, and possibly your editor in chief,  during class where they can have undivided coaching.

Theme

During your next editorial meeting, ask the team to brainstorm theme-related

Photography, design, and reporting

After your weekly staff meetings, you should have a good idea of the the page statuses for the yearbook. Your team will continuously be in a cycle of photographing-reporting-designing. Monitor progress by continuing to set and track goals. Break up the monotony by adding in relevant skill-building lessons and—dare I say it—nothing. Sometimes, a study hall so your students can catch up is a great way to show you value their time and commitment to all things yearbook.

Week 6 goal: establish routine

Rest assured you created consistency and accountability with a weekly team meeting. Because of this, students know their weekly assignments such as social media posts and photo shoots. All of your yearbook team is trained on your software, and with peer editing, a safe dialogue and pre-disclosed standards will refine areas of growth. Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be? No. And that’s OK!

Remember your role: advise. Here's a checklist to help.

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

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

Yearbook Hero Lauren Casteen decided in kindergarten if she were a teacher, she could go to school every day. Her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion transformed her approach to teaching yearbook class: instead of recruiting the top 20 students to create a book about their friends, she built a team that reflects the students whose stories they tell. In 2022, Lauren earned an M.Ed. in Urban Education with a certificate in Anti-Racism. Her pedagogical approach is to lead the yearbook class as a public history course where the goal is to accurately and thoughtfully record the history of Northern High School. 

Why should someone buy a yearbook in 2022?

As a historian, I like knowing that there is an artifact. Our yearbook students are telling future generations, “We were here!” It is something future scholars will study. Furthermore, our yearbook students have written and published something. It matters.

So much of our memory-keeping has become digital. I have 500 pictures on my Instagram, but it doesn’t compare to having something to physically go through. Digital doesn’t create a reverence for your memories. 

How do you address issues of equity with the yearbook?

When I inherited the yearbook program, it required a written application with teacher references. It limited the type of students who could apply. Now, any student can sign up regardless of grade or ability level. I run a discipline report prior to scheduling anyone in my class and have one-off conversations with students [e.g. history of truancy] as needed.

With yearbook, there are many places where different kinds of students can be successful, and I want a committed staff that is representative of the student body. We are a majority non-white, Title 1, semi-urban school. Students of all educational abilities and language backgrounds roam the halls. The yearbook class should reflect that. 

And you sold out three times.

Yes! I had to do a second order and had to open up sales to with the ship-to-home option. 

What made the Knights want the yearbook?

The yearbook staff evaluated last year’s yearbook: we found out it covered mainly the juniors and seniors. It was also very white, when the school is very diverse. We resolved to make it look like our school. 

As a school that is committed to equity, we can’t do that if we don’t know who is in the book. Since the yearbook is a historical document in the most faithful way possible, our team tagged and tracked coverage. And since my staff cannot be everywhere all the time, it is important for other people to send us things.

How did you crowdsource content?

I started with the teachers. I recorded a tutorial and emailed it, asking them to send us photos for the yearbook. The chorus and outdoor ed faculty were early adopters. I even taught the lacrosse team how to share photos via the app when they were headed to Wilmington for a game.

On our yearbook Instagram, we post sneak peeks. Someone commented that the outdoor ed page looked good. We responded, giving credit to the teacher. This created a buzz and now some teachers have a student classroom photographer to put ownership and responsibility on the kids. It also makes them want to join the yearbook staff.

Students like that the app talks to their Instagram; teachers like that it connects to their Drive.

What does the fall look like for the team at Northern?

I have 70 students signed up for the yearbook class for the 2022-23 school year. We are excited about this year’s book, as it will be the last book we’ll produce in our current building—we’re moving to a new home next year!