Design

Dear Mama, you're not alone. Many of us look at the creations in our children’s portfolio and think, “Now what?” The fridge is covered. The more ambitious among us swap out art in frames, while others load up bin after bin (or just chuck it in the bin). We have an art display idea to help you preserve your child's memories.

How to photograph your child’s art

The number one rule in photography applies here: get your lighting right! Eliminate shadows and flares by having multiple points of lighting. Natural lighting by a window is best.

Second, you’re going to want to make sure your camera angle is congruent to your art. (See, that high school geometry class has real world application!) This gets rid of distortion. You can make slight adjustments using your camera app.

Personalized pages

Now that your child’s art is digitized, do something with it!

Since every Treering yearbook comes with two, free personalized pages that print only in your yearbook, you can create a mini-gallery to display paintings, sculptures, and sketches without giving away more real estate in your home. (You can also add more pages for homework, family vacations, and events.)

Fast forward to high school graduation: all your yearbooks are lined up and you can show off your child's progression in penmanship, Scouting, or science fair.

Instead of suffering from mom guilt, you can display your child's year in art forever.

Two blogs ago, we began our journey to start and finish a yearbook in 60 days. From establishing a ladder and crowdsourcing structure to flowing portraits and adding in fall events, the first month yielded a near-complete yearbook. These next fifteen days of our adventure include proofing, promoting, and packing in spring events. All the resources you need are linked below (for help center articles, you will need to log in to the editor help center).

Yearbook (yes, it is a verb) along with us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

1. PDF proofing

Just because we are speeding through the yearbook creation process doesn’t mean we will be careless. Proofing tools such as downloadable PDFs and a free, physical cover-to-cover proof of your yearbook are free through Treering.

Let’s start with PDFs. English teachers everywhere will tell you errors that are missed on the screen often pop on paper. Read any copy (stories and captions) aloud to assess for tone and errors that digital proofing tools missed. These are low-resolution (the actual print file size might crash your computer), so you can download them quickly.

Use your PDF proofs to also

• Triple-check your portrait pages: correct spelling of names, the accurate placement of students and teachers in classes or grades
• Ensure faces aren’t lost on the edges (margins) or in the middle (gutter) of your spread
• Students are visible in the photos: sometimes, a photo box is the wrong size, and the faces are either huge or unrecognizably small. When possible, try to make all faces on a collage spread the same size.
• Show sneak peeks to your buyers - when parents see their child is in the book, they will buy the book!

Pro tip: use as many of your 99 PDF proofs as possible! 

Yearbook editing resources

• Video: Ordering PDF and Printed Proofs
• Blog: Free Yearbook Proofing Tools

2. Design pages (spring/second semester events)

Last time, you learned two ways to design. Because the second semester is unfolding as you build your yearbook, it may be easier to collect photos. This is the time to evaluate those first semester spreads: if they are not full by now, combine events and re-allocate space.

Coverage resources

• Blog: Six Ideas to Fill Pages in Your Yearbook
• Article: Adding Pre-Designed Pages (You must login to the editor Help Center to view)

3. Purchase reminders

In these remaining 30 days, up your promotion game by doing at least one thing a week to share about the yearbook:

• Reach out after each school event with the appropriate photo share link and email
• Call or email parents of students who are in the book three times and have not purchased
• Have a contest: the grade or homeroom with the largest percentage of purchases earns extended recess
• Remind purchasers to customize their yearbooks (more on this next time)
• Ask campus influencers (ASB, PTA/PTO accounts, athletics) to hype the yearbook
• Have flyers at a school-wide event, such as the band showcase

Yearbook sales resources

• Google Slides: Customizable Flyers
• Article: Tools for Promoting Your Yearbook
• Blog: 5 Social Media Posts to Sell Yearbooks

4. Printed proof

Treering’s Marketing Manager Megan P. likes to say, “Works in progress welcome!” Because you need your printed proof in hand before your final deadline, order it now. It can take up to 18 business days for this yearbook freebie to arrive.

With portraits and fall events in the book, there is plenty to evaluate. Use your remaining PDFs for copy and photo edits.

Pro tip: When my printed proof arrives, I take a Sharpie and mark it up. Then, I use it as a tool to clean up each spread one by one.

Proofing resources

• Video: Ordering PDF and Printed Proofs
• Blog: Free Yearbook Proofing Tools

Yearbook with a friend

Involve a second or third set of eyes during the proofing process. Potential yearbook proofing heroes include:

• Front office staff (they know all the things)
• Student TAs
• The secretary of the parent group
• Coaches and club leaders
• A friend who owes you a solid

Next time, we’ll send the yearbook to print and prepare for distribution.

In Dan Brown’s popular book, The Da Vinci Code, Harvard Professor Robert Langdon sets out to solve secret codes and messages related to the golden ratio. While the book is a work of fiction, there is science to the importance of the golden ratio in design.

Rumor is the Egyptians used it to build the Pyramids, Leonardo Da Vinci himself was a scholar of its applications, and modern day financial markets create models around it. Designs built around the golden ratio are said to be the most pleasing to the eyes.

So, what exactly is the golden ratio, and how does it apply to yearbook design? Without completely getting bogged down in complicated math, think of it as a rectangle with length (side B) roughly one and a half (1.618) times the width (side A).

In an interview in Science Daily, Duke University professor, Adrian Bejan, explains why the golden ratio is so pervasive in art and design:

When you look at what so many people have been drawing and building, you see these proportions everywhere. It is well known that the eyes take in information more efficiently when they scan side-to-side, as opposed to up and down.

Bejan goes on to explain that animals have evolved their vision to scan for danger from side-to-side, or along a horizontal plane. Predators and danger typically come from behind or the sides and almost never from above or below.

As animals developed organs for vision, they minimized the danger from ahead and the sides.

If you’re interested in reading more about Bejan’s connections between nature and the golden ratio, he has a fascinating blog.

There is a lot of debate surrounding the exact science behind why we gravitate towards design that follows the golden ratio, but what is known, is that we do love it. And what’s most important to us is creating more pleasing design, right? Let’s talk about a few yearbook design tips incorporating the golden ratio.

Creating a rectangle

Let’s start with the easiest application: Building a rectangle. Choose the length of the rectangle’s short side. For this example, we’ll use 600 pixels. Now multiply 600 pixels by 1.618 to get a rectangle of 600 by 971 pixels. This rectangle follows the dimensions of the golden ratio.

Creating golden text ratios

You’ll want your headlines to be in proportion to your body copy. In order to follow the golden ratio, simply multiple 1.618 by your body text size. For example, if your text is size 10, your headline will be 10 times 1.618, or size 16.

Fibonacci sequences

The simplest tool to creating design linked to the golden ration, is to use Fibonacci sequencing. Fibonacci sequences begin with 0 and 1. Add the previous two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence. 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21…and so on. The image below is a good example of a creating Fibonacci sequence for page layout.

See how the page spread below, using Fibonacci sequencing, could create a very pleasing layout for your yearbook?

Two types of people start a yearbook towards the end of the school year: those handed the crown minutes ago, and those with hundreds of other tasks for the school and now have “free” time to begin one more. Creating a yearbook in 60 days is doable. Promise. We’re breaking it down for you in four parts, each with two weeks' worth of tasks and inspiration. Consider this your yearbook easy button.

Throughout the series, there will be resources for inspiration and help.

‍

1. Confirm your book details

It’s tempting to jump into the glamorous yearbook tasks such as theme and design. There’s a little back-end work you need to do first for two reasons:

1. Your dates will direct your workflow
2. Your yearbook details determine the price of your yearbook

Dates

With Treering, you can change your dates at any time. Remember, your three-week turnaround begins once you hit Print Ready, and send your book to the printers.

For parents: custom pages deadline

Parents will see this date on their account, indicating when they should purchase the book or complete any customized pages. It doesn't impact the printing schedule. 

Some parents {raises hand} need a little extra time and reminders to complete theirs. Treering recommends a cushion of about two weeks.

For editors: finish editing yearbook deadline and estimated delivery date

This is your one and only deadline for editing the book—and you set it! Select a date three weeks from when you want to distribute it. 

You won’t be able to edit the delivery date directly. Treering automatically populates it by the date you choose for your deadline. If you need additional time to capture year-end events, no problem. Your three-week turnaround will align with your new deadline.

In part four, you’ll learn how to send your yearbook to print. 

Pricing

The yearbook price will change in real time when you adjust the page count and cover finish. The best way to firm up your page count is to create a ladder (more on this below). 

Shipping and index

Bulk shipping to the school is free. If you select this option, you choose how to receive your yearbooks:

• Sorted alphabetically
• Sorted by grade and then alphabetically
• Sorted by teacher and then alphabetically

Alternatively, many online or hybrid academies and schools electing to do a fall delivery choose the ship-to-home option. When parents order yearbooks, they also pay a flat rate shipping fee.

Book details resources

• Video: Chief editor dashboard
• Free Live Webinars: Treering’s Yearbook Club

2. Build a ladder

A ladder is a chart that represents the pages in a yearbook. It’s the industry-standard tool to help you stay organized. On it, you allocate a topic to each yearbook spread (that’s yearbook-ese for two facing pages). 

Because yearbooks tell the story of the year, there isn’t a codified order to how things go. Typically, they include

• Academics: school distinctives, achievements, and activities
• Events: fundraisers, activities, performances, before- and after-school activities
• Organizations: clubs and teams
• People: student, staff, and faculty portraits
• Thematic content: larger books employ divider pages to separate sections

To build your ladder, look at the last few yearbooks and the latest school calendar.

1. Brainstorm the non-negotiable events, sections (people, arts, sports), and yearbook traditions
2. Brainstorm features, specials, and theme-related content
3. Decide how you will organize the book
4. Allocate spreads

We love doing this digitally because it can be fluid. If your page count is looking overwhelming because of time or budget, combine some topics. Remember to update your page count on your book details so it matches your plan.

Yearbook ladder resources

• Google Sheet: Yearbook ladder template
• Google Sheet: Example ladders (there’s a separate tab for elementary, middle, K-8, and high school examples)

3. Set up photo folders

The best photo organization tip I can give came from Yearbook Hero Katie Parish. She said to create folders to mirror your ladder. This way, you know you are collecting content for every single spread you planned. And spoiler alert, your design process will look like this.

By investing the time to set up folders this way, you can simplify your workflow. Just open the corresponding folder and click, drag, drop, and done! 

In the video below, you’ll see how to add folders and set up crowdsourcing features. Notice the Art Show folder is Editor Only. This means only you, the editor, can place photos in this folder. After activating their accounts, parents will see the yellow “public” folders and be able to share. At any time, you can make a folder Editor Only and vice versa.

In Part Two, we will give you five strategies to fill those shared folders with content so you can build your pages.

4. Choose a whole-book look

The Styles menu is where it’s at: you can create font and photo presets, adjust your margins (#TeamMarginsOff), and select the theme for your yearbook. Because I have 60 days to create a yearbook, I am skipping all the customization options and selecting a pre-designed theme to give my yearbook a unified look.

For a cover-to-cover drag-and-drop experience, the design team recommends the following Treering themes:

Theme resources

• Google Slides: All Treering’s yearbook theme kits
• Blog Category: Theme ideas and inspiration

Remember, get to know your dashboard; it’s the first thing you see each time you log in. Part two of this series will outline the promotion tools built in the yearbook builder and start the design process.

Yearbook with a friend

You can also recruit team members to help you build and market the yearbook. With Treering, you can set permissions and assign pages to help delegate your workload. Additionally, parents, teachers, and students can help gather content and promote book sales.

Organization resources for yearbook teams

• Blog: 5 Yearbook volunteers to recruit
• Blog: Yearbook job descriptions

Personal anecdote: In 1996, I joined my first yearbook staff. Shout out to Mr. Wayne Weightman who took a chance on a loud introvert and turned her into a creator. Fast forward a quarter-century (sheesh) and his yearbook design lessons are still impacting students—some of whom are now educators—and scores of creators.

The easiest element: spacing

One pica was the standard back in the day when orange wax pencils and cropping squares were the norms. Each spread was designed on grid paper measured in picas. Below is an example of one pica standard yearbook spacing. It's clean. It's traditional. It's fin

Contrast that with tight spacing. This is one-half pica (the design equivalent of red stilettos). Your spread just had a glow up.

The dominant element: hierarchy in yearbook design

Hierarchy tells our buyers what’s important, and for all you ELA teachers, it’s the outline of the spread. Spoiler alert: size matters.

The yearbook design lesson here is to immediately attract your reader’s attention with a dominant image or module. Use the golden spiral to build off your dominant. Use this ready-made yearbook design lesson to help launch your discussion with your students.

1. Photographs

The most interesting, story-telling, awe-inspiring photo should be dominant on your spread. Connect your headline to this image. You can build off your dominant photograph to fill your spread. 

2. Headline

Advertising genius David Ogilvy said, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” 

Since a headline is our entry point, it should connect yearbook buyers with the focus of the spread. Avoid “Football” when every photo pictures football–your buyers are smarter than that. If you must spell it out, use the folio. Appropriate puns, alliteration, and rhymes are literary techniques to use.

3. Body copy

My yearbook students once tried to 86 captions because “no one reads them.” Another Mr. Weightman yearbook lesson: “If they were worth reading, people would.” Ouch. (And true.)

Lessons centered around the art of open-ended questions made interviewing more of a conversation. Students would develop 10 questions and always end the interview with “Is there anything else I could have asked?”

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, people did read those captions.

If you’re just getting started, practice using anecdotal quotes to fill in captions and add detail. Captions should include facts and sensory details while identifying the subject of the photograph and their grade. More writing lessons abound in the Treering Yearbooks’ free curriculum.

The fun elements: the acronym you and your students will never forget

Shout out to another design influencer: Robin Williams (not the genie). She’s a proponent of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity—master these four things, and everything you touch will be design gold. (I’ll give you one second more to figure out the acronym.) Teach these design elements individually, then combine them for the ultimate yearbook design lesson.

Contrast

Pair a bold font with a condensed one. Use opposite sides of the color wheel. Get crazy with font size (within reason). These design elements teach your reader where to look, and when used in concert with hierarchy, tell your students’ stories in an easy-to-follow manner.

Other ways to create contrast include shape (horizontal vs. vertical) and weight (thick vs. thin).

Repetition

From cover to cover, your book should look cohesive. Every layout will not be the same. I repeat, every layout does not have to be the same! Colors, fonts, sizes, and design elements should be consistent throughout your book. Remember, your theme is the brand, and your book is the platform by which you will develop it.  

Alignment

Design is intentional. On your yearbook spreads, align:

• Copy
• Photographs
• Quote packages

Proximity

Put the things that go together, together. This seems like a no-brainer, and yet, it’s a yearbook design lesson worth refreshing year after year. 

Yearbook design lessons are something you can teach throughout the year. Pin your favorite ideas (or steal some of ours).

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!

In my credential program, I missed the comprehensive graphic design, marketing, journalism, editing and proofreading, photojournalism, contract negotiation, and volunteer management track that would prepare me to be a yearbook educator. Over the years, an idea library on my classroom shelves slowly came about: other school's yearbooks, folders of magazine spreads worth emulating, Treering's Big Idea Book and Marketing Un-Stumped, plus gobs of digital files. If your yearbook advising journey is relatable, try these small changes that will make an impact on your book's visual look.

This blog was adapted from Yearbook Hero's Lauren Casteen's Teaching Yearbook: Graphic Design webinar. If you're interested in joining this professional community to grow your yearbook pedagogy or to score some PD hours, register for one of our free webinars on Zoom.

Graphic design self-analysis

On a scale of 1-5, how do you currently feel about teaching graphic design? Keep in mind teaching and doing are two different skill sets.

Mild, medium, or spicy?

Below are some suggestions based on your self-reflection. This year, you may be Mild, and next year, you'll apply some of Casteen's tips and be Medium with a hint of Spicy.

Yearbook theme

A theme helps keep your yearbook unified so it doesn’t look like a different person did every page (even if they did).

A theme does a lot of the graphic design work for you: it's like giving your students fill-in-the-blank notes as opposed to having them copy them by hand.
Lauren Casteen

‍

Mild

Choose a yearbook theme from Treering's Theme Gallery. Commit to it by using it for your whole book: each theme package includes layouts, backgrounds, and graphics you can mix and match. Using powerful tools such as auto page layout, you can create a beautiful book while learning.

When you're ready, move to Medium.

Medium

Casteen falls into the Medium category: she says they start with a Treering graphics package that supports the verbal theme, and then they adapt it. The 2022 Polaris team wanted a newspaper feel to go with "A Year to Remember." The staff blended QWERTY, which had a modern media feel, and Venture, which is filled with vintage items and textures, to create their book.

Spicy

You can design your own theme. Have students come up with a color palette using an online palette generator; use Treering’s font bank to match fonts. To build a unique look, consider including student drawings or artwork.

A style guide will help your designers remain focused. It will also help you, as an adviser, provide detailed feedback on how to improve the design. Here's Casteen's.

One graphic design concept at a time

Since graphic design is an entire professional field, and you could spend beyond four years in college studying it, there is entirely too much graphic theory and practice to complete in one semester or year of yearbook. By breaking it down, you can focus on what's essential for your team this year and build as you and your team grow. Here's how to do it:

Find the Golden Ratio blog and others on the design page of the blog.

Balancing first-year and returning yearbookers

If you have returners on your team, some of them may be Medium or Spicy, and that's OK. Now that you have some scaffolding, tailor your projects for your student by skill level.

You can revisit each topic each year with your returning staff members to make it more challenging. For example, maybe your newcomers are choosing a pre-made layout instead of doing it themselves, or maybe they are designing a layout for a module rather than an entire yearbook spread. Focusing on one specific skill at a time makes it easier for you as the teacher to differentiate.

Copy from the masters

The masters are "masters" for a reason. Whether it is a magazine ad or a social graphic, inspiration is out there. You can apply a photo treatment you saved from Pinterest on a divider page or emulate a car ad layout in your yearbook.

Get started in graphic design

Lastly, here are the action items from Casteen's session. Select one for your launch plan:

• Pick a theme if you haven’t (or maybe choose a few for your students to narrow down)
• Look through Treering blog articles to find a focus skill to teach
• Make yourself a Sandbox page and start playing around
• Find inspiration for a page to replicate

If you're interested in joining another of our working webinars, check out the entire Yearbook Club webinar schedule.

Adding an interactive element to your yearbook pages can increase engagement and personalization in a culture measured by double taps and shares. Interactive yearbooks can have modules or spreads where students can record their ideas or engage with content. (And if you know anything about Treering, we’re all about making yearbooks as unique as your students.) Below are four ideas, from drag-and-drop solutions to those requiring a bit more delegation (wink) for your yearbook.

Interactive = personal

The most hands-off way to help others interact with your yearbook is Treering’s custom pages. These two free pages in every yearbook are prime real estate for artwork, celebrations, firsts (lost tooth, car, homerun, etc.), and what matters most to each family. Knowing they are creating a keepsake, many parents opt to add more pages.

These custom page examples from the Treering team include non-school sports, pets, milestones, and family trips.

All about me pre-designed pages

While seeing all that our school community achieved in a year gives us the feels, adding opportunities for students to share their take captures a deeper moment in time. It shows students how they contribute to the whole with their unique take on the school year. Adding an All About Future Me component allows students to dream. (Moms, it also gives us something to read aloud at their graduation, “Yes, Erikson, you really did aspire to be an underwater ninja.”)

Pro tip: many Treering themes have these templates ready for you to drag onto a page.

Fill-in-the blank stories

Part 80s nostalgia, part English teacher ploy to get us to know our parts of speech, fill-in-the-blank stories can range from nonsensical to [fill in the blank]. 😉

We created one you can copy and paste for your yearbook.

Puzzles

Including puzzles in a yearbook enhances personalization because they can play with words, images, and situations unique to your campus, fostering a sense of ownership. Simultaneously, these activities bring additional engagement into the yearbook, making the publication more dynamic. You can choose to add content with words and pictures.

Word puzzles

Word searches, crossword puzzles, and the like add an entertaining interactive break from traditional pages. Additionally, for younger students, they can be a means to involve family members who may enjoy solving the puzzles with their child, creating another shared yearbook experience.

Include things in your puzzles such as school subjects and the 

• Mascot
• School address (street and city)
• Special events or all-school activities
• Principal’s last name
• Names of clubs, teams, or electives

An online puzzle maker can help you customize an interactive puzzle.

People matching

More fun than a history quiz, a yearbook matching module is a way to use your interactive content to increase coverage. Answers can share a page with the colophon.

Match:

• Students to cars
• Baby photo to the students or teacher
• Teachers to their first job
• The cleat to the sport
• The fundraising total to the class

The easiest ask: pets. 

Side note: maybe I should have titled this, “Gamify your yearbook.”

I spy

There are two takes on this:

1. Search for objects such as eight basketballs, 14 pencils, and five nets. These items already exist within a section or the yearbook as a whole; you're just asking the student body to take a closer look.

2. Find a person. This is the most labor-intensive: hide a COB of your mascot throughout the yearbook. (Yearbook Hero Katie Parish had a great take on this.)

Adding one or all four of these interactive yearbook page ideas gives students a place to reflect, share their “voice,” and foster a sense of community ownership of your collective narrative.

A yearbook ladder is a nice—and concise—chart representing the yearbook’s pages. Use it at the beginning of the year, and you’ll be able to better plan your book length, prioritize all the ideas you have for sections and stories, and determine what you have room to cover. Best yet, it doubles as a visual reminder of what your book is supposed to look like when it’s done. It’s basically one huge, visual post-it note.

When it comes to planning a yearbook, our favorite piece of advice for new yearbook advisers is this: Begin at the end.

Tweet

‍

It might sound counterintuitive, but knowing where you want to go before you start will help you get to that end goal a little faster—and a little happier. You can achieve most of that by picking your deadline, theme, and coverage goals, but there is one tool that will get you the rest of the way.

It’s the yearbook ladder.

Here’s what one looks like:

A ladder makes yearbook planning easier

Other yearbook planning tools, like project management spreadsheets, editorial calendars and deadline charts, might seem to do everything except make your morning coffee for you, but those tools miss a key element that yearbook ladders offer: a “big picture” view.

Have you ever struggled to remember where, exactly, your Halloween parade collage is set to go? Or how many pages you had reserved for prom night?

Your yearbook ladder will tell you right away.

Because a ladder can show you your book from the proverbial 50,000-foot view, you’ll never be more than a quick glance away from knowing where in your book you planned for each feature to go (and how much room you gave them).

The ladder is an especially useful device that can help you determine the layout and flow of the book, to make sure that you’re not forgetting anything, and to check and see that any multi-page features look as good as possible in the way they span the pages.

Tips for using a yearbook adder

To help you, we’ve compiled a quick list of things to do when you’re setting out to create your yearbook ladder:

• Start with last year’s book. Of course, you’re going to want to mix things up and try some new ideas, but there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Just move certain sections around based on your new theme and ideas. (If you didn’t have a book, or are trying a new type of coverage, start by listing everything you plan to cover.)
• Begin your ladder with your first page. Your first page on your ladder should be one that contains content. That means page one should be on the right side of the ladder, with no facing page. If you also list pages that don’t (or can’t) contain photos and text, you may confuse how many pages you actually need for your yearbook.
• Adjust as you go. You don’t want to mess with your plan too much, but the beauty of the ladder is that it can be easily rearranged to determine what looks and fits best. (That’s why we like our digital!) It’s a fluid document, so, if things change, you can easily adjust while still sticking to your original plan.
• Highlight pages on the ladder once they’re completed, and check them off once you’ve signed off those pages. Doing so will let you know exactly how close you are to finishing at all times.
• Teach others about the ladder. Even if you’re planning to control the document, you’ll want everyone to be familiar with how to read it. Ideas can flow better when people see everything laid out right in front of them.

Put your yearbook ladder to use

Yearbooks are usually designed in facing pages, also known as spreads, where you will have one “story” on each spread. Keep this in the back of your mind when planning your layout, so you can make sure the content on your pages flows as smoothly as possible.

If you find yourself with features that are one or three pages long, consider placing candid photos, quotes, or filler items on the opposite page to complement the feature. It’ll help keep each spread cohesive.

And you know a good tool to easily tell if you’re going to run into that issue, right? Of course you do. Grab a yearbook ladder and get to work. It’ll help you make an even better yearbook.

Adding a spot of gold is a growing yearbook trend. And we love it! While gold is a go-to accent for a 50th-anniversary book, use it to capture the spirit of 2024. See how easy it is to build a gold-themed yearbook with these design ideas and headlines.

1. Free Whole-Book Looks and Yearbook Templates
   1. Gold Foil Yearbooks
2. Advice as Good as Gold
3. More Than Just a Look
   1. Headline Ideas
   2. Punny Gold Headlines
   3. Headlines Using Synonyms
   4. Writing Your Own Headlines

Free whole-book looks and yearbook templates

You don’t have to begin with a blank book. Opting for a theme package is a time-saving alternative if crafting one from scratch seems overwhelming. These four golden packages by Treering Yearbooks below streamline the design process and are fully editable.

Gold foil yearbooks

Adding optional gold foil to the cover draws attention to specific elements like the school name or key theme graphics. 

These two resources will help you begin:

1. Adding foil to Treering’s art
2. Adding foil to your original design

Advice as good as gold

“A [Treering] theme does a lot of the graphic design work for you: it’s like giving your students fill-in-the-blank notes as opposed to having them copy them by hand,” said Yearbook Hero Lauren Casteen.

She and her team select one or two of Treering’s graphics packages and adapt them to tell the story of the year. They design layouts from scratch using the backgrounds, overlays, and other included visuals to build their style guide. Read more on Casteen’s approach to teaching design alongside using Treering here.

More than just a look

A visual theme becomes stronger when headlines connect content to create a story. Your gilded yearbook theme is more than a color scheme; it’s a clever play on the year (‘24) or a way to highlight a milestone (e.g., 50th anniversary). Here are some headlines to align your verbal and visual theme.

Headline ideas

A gold yearbook theme needs some golden headlines. We love browsing an idiom dictionary to create a list of headlines and spinoffs. Pro tip: an idiom dictionary is a great place to start with any theme.

• Worth its Weight in Gold
• Gold Mine of Information
• Heart of Gold
• Gold Standard
• Silence is Golden
• Golden Girls
• Gold Star(s)

Punny gold headlines

Puns, while a particular favorite of this adviser, are best used when peppered in. Using too many becomes like white noise and runs the risk of being unfunny. (The horror!) Remember, if one person doesn’t get it, chances are, many of your readers won’t–case in point: the Ponyboy Curtis reference above.

• Au-some
• Glitter of Speech
• Gold Feet - soccer or step team
• Golden Age of the [mascot]
• Goal Diggers - volleyball
• If I Gold You That
• Thanks a Bullion

Headlines using synonyms

As with puns, too many Gold This and Gold That headlines diminish the luster. Brainstorm a list of synonyms to use, and then search your idiom dictionary for new nuggets.

• All that Glitters
• Rain or Shine
• Rise and Shine
• Sea to Shining Sea
• Shine On
• Shining Example
• Take a Shine to

Writing your own headlines

If a curated list is too much of an easy button, and you want to teach the process, here are five steps to craft a headline.

1. Review the spread and sum up the coverage in a single sentence.
2. List five keywords from the coverage.
3. Look up idioms and/or puns incorporating those keywords and their synomyns. Compile a list of five to ten before moving on.
4. Evaluate which headline idea achieves the goal of accuracy, clarity, and interest.
5. Revise and rewrite until the answer is “yes” for all three.

‍
To dig more into a goldmine of theme development, check out

• Treering’s Free Curriculum
• 3 (but really 7) Design Elements to up your Yearbook's Visual Appeal
• Creating a Yearbook Style Guide: Advice to Follow

We love nothing more than seeing yearbooks personalized with each student's memories. Custom pages embedded within the pages of classmates, activities, and school-wide celebrations deliver more than memories. They celebrate the uniqueness of the individual holding the yearbook. Congratulations to all the parents who created and shared their designs. The following six wowed our panel of designers and yearbook parents to earn the top honors in either the K-8 category or high school one.

K-8 custom page winners

First place: Laura Dauley, IL

"I wanted to honor Harper’s eleven years at Mayer with custom pages that show her journey from beginning to end," Dauley said.

Why we loved it: this spread looks like it could be a magazine ad. It's clean. The photos have a strong alignment. Dauley's use of the canary for both Harper's name and the years adds balance where the polo shirt could have been a distraction. The negative space in the parent message is a place of rest for the eyes among the thirteen photographs.

Second place: Nicki Prettol, TX

Since her son loves baseball, "it seemed fitting to give him baseball-themed custom pages," Prettol said.

Why we loved it: Again, the use of color made the designers on the judging panel smile: the orange is in both photos and text, unifying the design. From the stats on the left-facing page, to the highlights on the right, Prettol used a little text to make a big impact.

Third place: Colleen Packman, TX

"As his elementary 'mission' comes to an end," said Packman, "I couldn't think of a better way to represent his time than to relate it to one of his favorite hobbies."

Why we loved it: E-sports and cyberpunk are trending in the design world. That alone made us take a second, third, fourth (you get it) look. She used subheadings to organize the content in a game UI.

High school custom page winners

First place: Ethan Scrogham, IL

"This year I am a senior and wanted to put something to show all of my accomplishments and activities," said Scrogham. He compiled this spread using photos from the past four years.

Why we loved it: The story. Scrogham's involvement increased each year (as did his smile). Seeing a freshman on the court wearing a mask grow into a campus leader is a portrait of resilience.

Second place: Amie Kelp, MI

"This [creating a custom page] is the best way to personalize a book possible," Kelp said. She created over ten to celebrate her daughter and the memories they made.

Why we loved it: The title made us smile, as did the pet photos. Kelp used the border color to visually connect related adventures, which brought some order to the collages.

Third Place: Kirsten Megaro, NJ

Megaro said, "As homeschoolers, most of life is part of our learning. This first spread gives an overview of our year." Each child also has their own spotlight custom pages spread for their personal memories.

Why we loved it: This spread shows the impact three people can have on their family and community. Megaro matched the photo styles bringing unity to the various backgrounds and locales. She also made the busy background work by using white text blocks with transparency.

The 2024 Design Contest Winners are the most diverse collection to date. 

“Every year, our editors craft spreads that wow and inspire our judging staff.” said Marketing Manager Megan P.

With nearly 50 creatives combing through the submissions, each looked for their ideal. Purists advocated for hierarchy and balance, journalists dug through each piece of copy for the stories, graphic designers sought out-of-the-box applications, and empaths soaked in every moment. The three winners for each category are below, plus some favorites we had to showcase.

Lone rangers (teams of one or two)

Solo yearbook coordinators hold a special place in our hearts; that’s why they have their own category. They tackle both administrative and creative tasks. They are the face and hands of their yearbook programs. And they shared some legendary spreads.

First place winner: Arianna Fang, Thomas Russell Middle School

Arianna Fang displays an understanding of how repetition and consistency enhance design. Fang uses several colors in the swirls and accents. They all share a palette, bringing harmony. One judge called out the “pop” the palette brings to each page.

“I love the use of color and design throughout this spread,” a second judge said. “It immediately sucked me in and made me want to read the page.”

Her spread uses elements of art to showcase students at work. From photo frames that look like brushstrokes to the dotted stroke details on the edging of a few photos, there is a DIY aspect. She also repeats the purple accents as a wash and leopard spots in different levels of transparency, bringing balance. 

“Even with all the elements on the pages, it has good movement and interest,” a judge said.

“Art is expressing ourselves,” Fang said. “And if you believe in the beauty of art, you can achieve wonders.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Second place winner: Karen Goodchild, COACH

Karen Goodchild had us at her brilliant use of modular design. Her spread has a variety of stories, excellent hierarchy, and multiple reader entry points. Several judges called out the detail of students holding up the page numbers.

“This entry includes a lot [over 60] of students without overwhelming the spread,” a judge said.

A dark background could be problematic. Goodchild demonstrates mastery of contrast by ensuring all the copy is readable.

“I appreciate the balance of traditional yearbook content with fun graphics and content,” a judge said.

Third place winner: Sabrina Reimann, Westmont Junior High School

First day traditions at Westmont Junior High include red carpet and music on campus. “Our 6th graders are always nervous, and we make it welcoming for them,” Sabrina Reimann said.

This spread captures that energy.

The DIY look is a huge graphic design trend. It resonated with several judges who said, “The bulletin board vibes take me right back to the first day of school” and “This looks like my school yearbook.”

The layered effect helps the art and photos work together.

“It is a fantastic representation of what you can design with Treering's available background and graphic options,” a judge said.

Group gurus (teams of three or more)

While yearbook clubs and classes use teamwork to create their books, they do it while balancing delegation, learning communication, and trusting one another. The top three team collaborations had little in common stylistically. Where the won the hearts of the judges is in their storytelling.

First place: Jensen Ranch Elementary

Many judges-slash-parents had an emotive reaction to seeing these role models and campus influencers on display in this way.

“Students are going to revisit these pages because not only are they able to see their teachers’ photos as a blast from the past, but their words are influential,” a judge said.

These “relatable” and “heartwarming” “pearls” (the judges’ words) are the result of the yearbook team’s efforts. They collected the quotes and photos, a labor-intensive task in itself, and organized them in the winning design with uniform sizing to keep such a content-rich spread from becoming cluttered. 

Adviser Johnetta Maduakolam said, “It captures the essence of our school community from the past to the present.”

Second place: North Star Academy

Ownership.

“None of the 22 students [in the yearbook program] actually chose to be there,” Adviser Carol Landers said, “Once we got the Treering software, the excitement kicked in, and kids started asking for jobs.”

Now look at them. From theme explanation and the colophon to the stats (hello, 86% in the yearbook 2x or more) and job descriptions, the team at North Star Academy used the space to educate others on their campus about the facets of yearbooking. 

From a visual perspective, there’s so much more to love about this spread:

• “Great mix of images and text to carry the reader’s eye through the spread.”
• “Colors are cohesive and match a beachy theme.”
• “Loved seeing the theme subtly applied to the background, colors, graphics, and text.”
• “Great use of space, equal and consistent spacing, and font choices.”

Third place: Northern High School

Our love of this spread stems from the fact that everything points back to the theme:

• Wordplay
• Blueprint background “pulls it all together“
• Storytelling

“I love the story that this spread is telling,” a judge said. “You can tell that the school is building and making a positive change for the students.”

The team at Northern took care to design each module to fit the content. For example, the timeline is a graphic quick read, and the first-day saga is a feature story with multiple perspectives. The photography is also diverse: action, headshots, groups, and in-progress views.

“It gives readers a great sense of this school’s big move,” another judge said.

Design contest honorable mentions

The above slidwshow contains designs from:

• Karen Goodchild, COACH
• Matt Jones, Mission Oak High School
• Carren Joye, Academy Days Co-op
• Carol Landers, North Star Academy
• Yuri Nwosu, Lennox Middle School
• Brooklyn Vanderhey, Brookings-Harbor High School
• Bri Webb, Rooted Christian Co-op