Themes

Making a yearbook is a lot of work, but it can be fun too. We built our yearbook software to take away as much of the hard work as possible, so you and your yearbook staff can focus on the fun stuff. No more fighting with changes in portraits or keeping track of yearbook purchases; whether it's making your yearbook, managing your yearbook staff, or collaborating with your community, we eliminate the pain so you can focus on capturing your school's year in a beautiful yearbook.

Manage your yearbook program like a pro

Call it your very own mission control. Right from your dashboard, you can see who has purchased and who hasn't. See a running total of how much money you have raised for your school throughout the year.

Work from anywhere

For the parents in your community who are on the go, they can do everything from their mobile devices. They can add photos to your community's shared folders, design their student's custom pages, and purchase their student's yearbook while waiting in the pickup line.

Assign roles and permissions to your yearbook staff

Grant some users an all-access pass to your yearbook by making them the Chief Editor, or limit their responsibilities by making them a Staff Editor or Restricted Staff Editor. Some people on your yearbook team may only need to add photos or edit text, while others need more responsibility. The choice is yours!

Your entire yearbook staff will be able to edit only those pages you have assigned them, making it clear for the editors to understand their responsibilities and easy for you to manage in one place.

Make suggestions and share ideas on each page within the book. Get notified each time you go in to edit the book if there are new notes, comments, or questions to read.

Once a page is finished, the editors of that page can mark it complete. Now you know their progress (and the big picture). Your finished pages are safe from unintended edits.

Keep track of all your students

Treering's yearbook software will automatically build an index for your yearbook. Never again worry about making sure each student gets equal coverage in the yearbook, or trying to make the index yourself.

Never again worry if a photo has been used on a previous page. Or how many times each student is in the yearbook. With Treering you can tag students in each of your photos, and easily see which photos have and have not already been used.

Easy layout creation

Save time and easily create your yearbook with theme-driven, drag-and-drop templates. Powerful tools and an intuitive interface give you the easiest yearbook software you'll ever use.

Auto layout

Organizing photos perfectly on a page can be tedious, but it shouldn't be. With Treering, just select the photos you want on a page and our yearbook software will automatically drop them into a beautifully designed layou

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If InDesign is more your thing, no problem, you can upload all the designs you'd like.

Portrait auto flow

Point, click, grab some coffee. Yearbook portrait pages are no longer painful. Automatically arrange yearbook portraits. Customize the page layout. Make changes easily. Boom. Between 40-60% of your book is complete, and if you want to add more content to your portrait pages, you can.

Perfectly aligned photos in a snap

It is nearly impossible to manually ensure each photo is centered and aligned on a page perfectly. We've made it possible by adding gridlines that don't get printed, but make book-building a breeze. If you'd like to make it even easier, you can have all your photos snap to the grid. Oh snap! With this kind of precision, you'll feel confident knowing your book will look perfect.

E-commerce

Raise Money with recognition ads

Set your price per size, and let our yearbook software do the rest. When parents log in to buy the book, they will be given the opportunity to purchase one or donate one. Parents get to celebrate their children, and you get to provide your school some extra money to cover the cost of new cameras, field trips, or whatever you might need.

Online marketing and photo-sourcing

School community involvement in the yearbook is crucial, whether that's making them aware of how to buy the book, help contribute photos, or participate in the annual yearbook signing party, you need your community to be involved. We've got you covered from yearbook sales and online purchases to digital signature capabilities.
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Crowdsource yearbook photos

Get more photos for your yearbook by sourcing them from your parents, students, and teachers. With Treering's yearbook software you can create shared photo folders to which your entire community can add photos.

Build your own shared folders for your yearbook staff to use for everything from retakes and doubles to sports and clubs. You can also create a private spot for just you and your yearbook editors rather than the entire community.

Upload photos from anywhere

We understand that all communities store school photos in different places, so we've made sure that our yearbook software will easily allow you to upload from anywhere. Facebook, Instagram? Yup. Google Drive, Google Photos? Got it. Or if you've got photos on your mobile phone or desktop, we can upload them from there too, whatever is best for you.

Yearbook sales made simple

Treering doesn't make your school commit to minimum orders meaning no financial pressure, but it's still something you'll want to do, so we wanted to make it easy. You can add links to your community's Facebook page. You can send emails directly to just those parents who haven't yet purchased. On top of all this, we have a bunch of professionally designed flyers for you to use. If you'd like to have some printed, no problem, we'll do that for free, cause fees just aren't our thing.

Keep your yearbook community accurate

Sometimes students change schools, or a parent accidentally creates two accounts. Our yearbook software helps you keep your community organized. You can quickly merge or separate student accounts, and add or remove students throughout the year as things change.

Even more to love

E-signatures

Technology has changed the way students socialize. With Treering's software, students can e-sign their friends' yearbooks with photos and stickers which can be printed on their free custom pages just in their yearbook. 

Ensure consistent design throughout the yearbook

Set the theme, photo styles, text styles, and more in one place for your entire yearbook. Define all of it, none of it, or just some of it—whatever fits your yearbook style.

Favorites

With so many professionally designed templates, it could be easy to forget where you and your yearbook staffs' favorite ones are. Simply click the stars on the ones you like and they will all be in one spot moving forward.

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

In March, Treering Yearbooks announced its 2022 #TreeringMemoriesMatter Design Contest for yearbook advisers, coordinators, and editors to share their unique perspectives from their campus community. It’s time to meet the winners and glean their best practices for yearbook spread design.

Jazmine Richey is a student editor from Grandview High School in Grandview, WA who was nominated by her editor-in-chief Lilly Kassinger for her basketball spread. This spread caught our eye and became the one to beat for several reasons: it shows basketball season from the fans and team’s POV, it’s modular, and there’s a highlight reel produced by Jazmine linked to the QR code.

Jazmine, what all went into creating this spread?

I wanted to create a spread with not only the sports players included but the huge student section our school held. I created a highlight video for our boys' basketball team and wanted it to be included on my spread to show parents, students, or anyone who buys a yearbook. I took a picture of our own basketball hoop and wanted to incorporate each of our boys by giving them their own basketball.

It was an exciting year for you: national recognition for your yearbook staff, basketball state tournament playoffs, a crowd in the stands, and a new campus building!

They're pretty excited, especially because it's everyone's first year in the yearbook class. We're all really glad our hard work has paid off like this. More than anything, this yearbook spread represents both the creativity of our yearbook team and the passion our school showed during the winter sports season. 

Lilly, please describe your relationship with Jazmine and why you nominated her.

Jazmine is one of our spread developers. In addition to creating her spreads, she does photography and edits videos to create content for our school. My role as editor-in-chief is to edit the spreads made by our team to make them fit together and take care of the rest of the book's loose ends.

How does your team design the book?

Our team makes all our spreads in Adobe InDesign and everyone creates their own layouts. As the editor, it's always nice to see the way each person on the team likes to design their spread, because once they make a couple you can see what their style is. Then I get to make the little tweaks to tie them all together for our book

Explain the big tie-in: the red line.

The spread is built around what we call the Red Line of Equity, which is a red line that is on our hallway tiles in real life. As this is our first year in our new building, we decided to incorporate it into our yearbook as a design element featured on every page, tying back into our theme of "Paving The Way" as we take the new parts of the school and turn them into traditions. The line represents not only the presence of the Red Line of Equity in our everyday lives but the beginning of the creation of traditions here at GHS.

Our school's yearbook's main strength is our theme and the way it is present in all aspects of our design. Our Red Line doesn't run through every page just because. We gave it a meaning. Just think about what story are you trying to tell about your school and dive right into making it into a reality.

What advice would you give to another student who is just getting started?

The most important thing is to have a vision.

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

When beginning to develop your yearbook theme, the choice of a traditional or trendy theme determines the layout design and the overall feel of the book. Many see traditional and trendy as opposing ends of a design spectrum. We hope to show you how you can fuse them as you create your yearbook theme.

Traditional design

Traditional yearbooks can be timeless. Their design structure is safe and predictable, easing readers through each turn of the page. Their appeal is not limited to students: parents, teachers, and alumni also feel included. 
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When following traditional design, design elements such as consistency, repetition, alignment, and proximity bring beauty and order to the design. Everything has a place and a purpose. 
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Some may argue that traditional design takes away from creative freedom, and they opt for the opposite: a yearbook led by a visual trend.

Trendy design

Inspired by a new social media platform or pop culture movement, trendy yearbook themes can be the creative equivalent of a blank check. Graphics and layouts can be playful, dynamic, buzzworthy, or a combination of all three! The immediate response from the student body is reactive, in a good way, because a trendy theme is an in-the-moment one. 

Beyond hashtag sensations, fashion and art trends may drive the visual concept. Retro, scrapbook, and organic yearbook themes capture the spirit of students. Each conceptually has an authentic vibe and pushes traditional design norms by being more aligned with a DIY ethos. 

Cons of using a trendy yearbook theme

Because they are deeply connected with a visual concept, they may not be fully developed verbally, leaving the theme concept feeling unfinished. While trendy yearbook themes immediately connect with the student body, they may also quickly feel outdated. 

Take a look at these three tech-inspired Treering themes. Each captures a specific moment over the past ten years: the advent of "likes," virtual classrooms, and a glow up.

How to choose?

The best way to select a visual identity is to begin with the verbal. What story do you want to tell? Why?
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How to choose a yearbook theme

You’re expecting this to be all about brainstorming to increase buy-in, aren’t you?

Think about longevity and what value you want the yearbook to have in ten years or more. Determine if you want to create another volume in your school’s legacy or capture a specific moment.

Classic and current: a blended approach

A traditional book can feel dull with page after page of safe design. Conversely, a trendy book without proper hierarchy and balance feels chaotic. That’s why we advocate for trend-forward with timeless structure; it’s the Hannah Montana of yearbooks. Traditional design grounds the book, and trends bring it to life. 

Ideas to blend traditional and trendy design:

1. Font pairings: Use contrast to create your headlines

2. Color palette: Add a pop of color to a traditional color palette

3. Visual “hits”: Use up to three elements throughout the book to add variation

4. Showstopper spreads: Punctuate portrait pages with a highly visual spread

5. Trending treatment: Add a photo treatment to break up a traditional layout

Keep in mind, great design never goes out of style. And, when paired with quality captions and copy to tell the story of the year, that’s what makes your yearbook stand the test of time.

You might be missing these favorite yearbook ideas. If any part of your yearbook process feels stuck, scattered, or stale, one of these posts is probably the solution you didn’t know you needed. Read them. Share them. Build them into your curriculum or club routine and watch your yearbook program transform.

1. Easy +1: a guide to leveling up your yearbook

This comprehensive guide outlines five key ways to elevate your yearbook beyond collage pages. It provides practical steps to add something new to next year’s book: a focus on storytelling, expanded coverage, better photography, or modular design.

Use the five focus areas to create

• Rotating workshop stations early in the year to build foundational skills.
• A self-assessment rubric for your team.
• A “Level Up” day where each leader identifies one area to improve in their section.

1. Easy +1: a guide to leveling up your yearbook

A colleague who studied violin using the Suzuki Method shared that he was able to succeed because he didn’t go from 0-60 in a few lessons.

2. How to choose a yearbook theme

This piece walks you through the theme process without relying on chaotic verbal brainstorms. (Some yearbook creators even find its anti-brainstorming angle a little divisive. And we liked it.) It provides teaching support to non-designers and new advisers with practical, flexible guidance.

It includes prompts, real-world examples, and tips for involving students at all grade levels.

How to choose a yearbook theme

You’re expecting this to be all about brainstorming to increase buy-in, aren’t you?

3. 10 people to thank

Yearbook creation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This gratitude-focused post highlights the unsung yearbook heroes, including the front office staff, IT teams, principals, coaches, and more. Yearbooks are a high-stress, deadline-driven project; injecting gratitude is a reminder that the yearbook extends beyond your class or club.

Make gratitude part of your yearbook culture:

• Include a recurring “Who Helped You This Week?” check-in during staff meetings.
• In the yearbook, you can include a “Behind the Book” thank-you spread.

10 people to thank

‘Tis the season to show appreciation. A quick internet search nails myriad resources outlining how regularly expressing thanks can positively impact one’s mental health and overall well-being.

4. Adviser advice: keep, change, stop

One of the few tools that seamlessly transferred from student teaching to the newsroom is “Keep, Change, Stop,” a structured reflection tool. It helps teams evaluate the yearbook process with three simple prompts: what to keep, what to change, and what to stop doing. (Clever name, eh?)

It’s an adaptable debrief for editors, staff, and advisers alike.

In this blog post, four yearbook advisers share their POV. Based on their real-life examples, we have a framework to drop what’s not working and preserve beneficial habits each school year.

Doing this exercise with middle and high school yearbook creators encourages student voice and leadership in shaping the next year’s book. “Keep, Change, Stop” promotes a healthy, intentional yearbook culture.
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Adviser advice: keep, change, stop

If starting the year with a yearbook debrief wasn’t possible or 3rd period publications popped up on your schedule the day before school started, start here.

5. Yearbook debriefing: a summer reflection

This five-minute read outlines a strategic, low-stress way to reflect on the yearbook process over the summer. It offers questions and prompts to help advisers and returning staff capture what worked and what needs to shift before the next yearbook creation cycle begins.

This post helps you process what happened while it’s still fresh, and with a little distance.

To use it now, assign editors a summer reflection form based on the post’s questions and use their input to build your back-to-school agenda.
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Yearbook debriefing: a summer reflection

Now that your yearbook is a wrap and there’s nothing but sunshine ahead, it’s nice to take some time to reflect on your achievement.

We all want our yearbooks to stand out, and sometimes the best yearbook ideas (wink, wink) are hiding in plain sight. We hope these five blog posts deliver the clarity, creativity, and strategy you and your staff need.

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Scrapbooks are deeply personal and emotionally charged. They’re where Millennial moms stash ticket stubs, scribbled notes, and snapshots. Students also lean towards the collage aesthetic via pop culture inspiration—like the Burn Book in “Mean Girls” or My Adventure Book in “Up.”

While the Burn Book itself is not the kind of sentiment you want to capture in a school yearbook, its visual style has inspired many scrapbook-themed designs: magazine cutout lettering, sticker overload, and chaos-meets-craft aesthetic speak to the way students envision personal memory books. 

Likewise, Carl and Ellie’s book is a love letter to scrapbooking itself. It balances whimsy, sincerity, and nostalgia. (We’re not crying. OK, maybe a little.)

Three free Treering themes to get the scrapbook vibe

One of the best parts of the scrapbook yearbook theme is its flexibility. You can up the visual intensity depending on your staff’s skill level and your community’s taste. We have three complete yearbook themes that model scrapbook yearbooks. 

Because a scrapbook style mimics personal journaling, students feel connected. It looks like their notes, their lockers, and, to an extent, their social feeds. The collage-inspired layouts also let you pack in more visual content, perfect for schools that crowdsource images from parents, staff, and students.

“Crafted” - intro to the DIY aesthetic

The 75 pre-designed templates have built-in white space and subtle borders, which gives a clean scrapbook look. The 64 graphics, which include a variety of torn papers and tapes, allow teams to add variety and rough edges. This look works well for journalistic high school books that want polish with personality.

“Collage” - scrapbooking to the max(imalist)

Lean into creative chaos with 862(!) design elements. This theme mimics a real-life scrapbook packed with overlapping images, ripped notebook paper, buttons, stickers, and magazine-style clippings. Because it is a maximalist look, you can create unity among the varied elements by

“Venture” - the vintage journal

Inspired by antique books, this yearbook theme includes 100 aged paper backgrounds plus 616 graphics including typewriter keys, delicate handwritten fonts, antique elements, and photo corners. The textures and photorealistic elements work well in layers with a handwritten or type-writer font. Like the maximalist approach above, remember the rules of design to keep it from looking cluttered.

A scrapbook yearbook theme works at any level, elementary, middle, or high school. It can look rustic and handmade. Retro and analog. Colorful and chaotic. Minimalist and soft. The best part? It doesn’t lock you into a single aesthetic—it's more of a concept than a rulebook.

What is a colophon anyway? Publishers include this vital piece to record production notes and sometimes acknowledgments. Since your yearbook is a historical document, including a colophon adds professionalism to your publication. But it doesn’t have to be boring! Below are three examples of yearbook colophons that include theme details, shout-outs, and yearbook staffing information. 

Essential components for your yearbook colophon

1. Title of yearbook and theme information: include any behind the design information
2. Book details: the number of pages, cover type, and paper weight
3. Design specs: font names sizes and use cases
4. Photography credits: Identify your portrait photographer, staff photographers, and any volunteer super parents who contributed
5. Software tools: list which applications you used to build your book
6. Publisher information: name of the publisher and the names of the publishing staff who helped

Thematic colophons

Both of these colophons leverage their themes (Stay Gold and Speak Life, respectively) with the headlines as well as the graphics. (The actual copy of their colophons is below for you to use.)

A bold colophon

We love this one because it features the yearbook team, gives the book details in an easy-to-read format, and both editors have space to say thank you.

Yearbook colophon template

To create a quick colophon, copy and paste the following in your yearbook. Make it your own by giving behind-the-design details.

[Yearbook name] is produced by [School Name] in [City, State] and published by Treering Yearbooks in San Mateo, CA. The [hard- and/or softcover] yearbooks are [matte or glossy] finish [with upgraded embossing or foil]. The book's [number] pages are printed in full color on 100lb. sustainably sourced paper—the Treering standard. We used the Treering app for the layouts; [if applicable, list software used to make photo illustrations]. The theme art is [theme name from Treering] and [name] designed the cover. Headlines are [font and size] with subheadings in [font and size]. Body copy is [font and size]. [Photographer] took the school portraits and [parents, coaches, non-yearbook students] contributed [team, event, and/or candid] photos.

Building a yearbook program relies on building traditions with your staff and school community. When we build school traditions, we create a culture and expectations while transmitting values. That doesn’t equate with inflexibility, rather it provides a guide within which we ebb and flow. While the greatest tradition is the yearbook itself (more on that in a second), here are six others to build a lasting program. 

An American institution since George K. Warren took photos of graduates in the late 19th century and sold them as prints to share, yearbooks are the definitive school tradition. What started off as a college-only record book now extends to elementary schools. 

This adviser has watched students from world history classes grab yearbooks from the idea library and scour copies from other schools while awaiting the bell to ring. With no connection to the students, these school desk critics compared how our programs—such as ASB, athletics, and the arts—matched up with theirs. They evaluated the theme, mainly the visual components, and gave me a three-minute critique. [Pats self on back for not laughing.]

1. Staff traditions

Yearbook wedding

Trending with middle and high school staffs, yearbooks weddings are a pre-production celebration where students pledge themselves to the task. 

1. The yearbook staff writes vows. This can be as simple as providing a positive atmosphere and completing assignments on time, or as specific as SMART goals for coverage and sales.
2. The adviser invites parents and stakeholders (admin, student leadsherhip, coaches, parent org leaders) to attend
3. At the ceremony, students recite their vows and receive a ring
4. Everyone eats cake

#Yerdsgiving

First of all, yerd means yearbook nerd and it’s polarizing: people loathe or love it. (For those of you playing along at home, I'm the former.) Regardless, #yerdsgiving is the annual gathering of journalism students over food before Thanksgiving break. Some students lead crafts or games, some practice the art of gluttony. Most take the time to craft thank you cards to school staff and students as well as vendors and parents who helped the yearbook team gain momentum at the start of the year. This yearbook tradition is also an avenue to invite alumni to inspire your current staff or even families to celebrate.

Holiday gift exchange 

While it seems like you have a gift exchange for every group with which you’re involved, keep it simple:

• Hold a re-gift exchange where students bring in something they received and don’t want.
• Exchange variations on a theme such as socks or snacks
• Put dollar store stockings up with 3x5 cards so classmates can write notes of encouragement

Yearbook banquet 

Being on yearbook staff has to have perks, and one is a fancy-pants dinner before distribution. (Please note fancy is a relative term: we’ve done everything from a chain Italian restaurant to a steakhouse to a revolving sushi bar.) Think of your typical sports banquet: the coach (adviser) stands and speaks a few remarks on the team then hands out the awards. Traditionally, the yearbook staff unwraps their yearbook and shares it with their family. It’s special because they have the first copies and it’s individualized time for parents to see all the work their child accomplished. 

2. Thematic marketing

Theme surveys are a fun way to raise awareness that yearbook sales began as well as get buy-in from your school on the theme. While yearbook purists believe a theme should apply to one year only, you may find several coveted visual aesthetics from Treering Yearbooks’ theme gallery. 

The big reveal can happen once you receive your printed proof and you can make videos and social media teasers with your staff. Some schools make it one of their back to school traditions to reveal the yearbook theme at the start of the school year and use it throughout to market the book and generate content by

• Making T-shirts and wearing them when they are photographing events (remember that QR code to buy!)
• Creating thank you cards, Google slide presentations, and posters via theme graphics
• Asking related questions via social media; for example, with a theme “Give + Take,” ask for multiple takes on the fun run or invite athletes give their top five songs for warm up
• Keeping everything yearbook-related in your theme colors

3. 3x yearbook coverage

Maximizing coverage should be a tradition for every yearbook staff. If we are truly telling the story of the year, it involves everyone on campus. From a yearbook marketing perspective, if students know they are in the book, they will want the book. If they want the book, parents will buy the book.

We love thinking of yearbooks as memory books—they are—they are also a component of the historical record.

4. Staff recruitment and announcement

Your yearbook team is a big deal. Say it with me, "We are a big deal!" Create yearbook staff traditions around recruitment and the announcement of who made the cut each spring. Some ideas include

• Host a party and pass out applications
• Crown your staff publicly (feather boas, sashes, and capes work well too)
• Publicize who is on your yearbook team in newsletters, on social media, and in the front office so parents, coaches, and prospective volunteers can get in touch with you

After all, your yearbook team is a big deal.

5. Freeze time

You don’t have to be Doc and Marty McFly to time travel. Year after year, yearbooks create a personal history; the yearbook might be a few hours of reading during summer, and when you fast forward five or ten years, it will be so much more. Moms, let’s face it, our yearbooks give our kids license to laugh at our hair, clothes, and priorities.

The value of a yearbook does not end at graduation.

6. Dedication

Does your school have a tradition of dedicating the yearbook to a member of your staff or community? If not, skip to the next section. This gets political.

A yearbook dedication could

• Thank a teacher for being a yearbook champion
• Recognize an administrator who is retiring
• Honor a member of the faculty who impacted the school community
• Be a blanket statement to a group on campus, such as the robotics team who went to the national championship for the first time
• Congratulate the promoting/graduating class

7. Yearbook distribution party traditions

Many schools have a special, extended lunch or tie distribution to an all-school event to celebrate the end of the year. A word of advice: if this is a new tradition for you, connect with school leadership early to plan your distribution day.

The good

A simple party with pens, tunes, and tables is all you need. Always invite non-buyers to include them in the signing. More than likely, they'll be the first to buy a book next year. (And if you're using Treering Yearbooks to publish, parents can still buy a book!)

Pizza, a DJ, and pens that correspond to class colors take it to the next level.

The extra

One K-12 school I know used to have students line up outside a bounce house. After they climbed up and slid down, they'd receive their yearbook.

Another elementary school invites the middle school cheerleaders to the signing party. They perform and pump up the 5th graders for fall.

Whichever yearbook traditions you employ, make sure they match your community. If you're just getting started, select one and own it. Once it's routine, add another.

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

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).

With most of the school year in the proverbial book, we are counting down until summer vacation. End-of-the-year celebrations aren't complete without a yearbook. If you're the one wearing the yearbook coordinator crown, it's time to circle the wagons and quickly create your elementary school yearbook without sacrificing style. We have live webinars to help jumpstart your second semester.

Step 1: upload your student roster

Your first step is a quick visit to the front office (remember to bring some lattes) to get a community and student roster. This seems tedious. It will save you hours if you do this first. You will easily be able to

• Tag to ensure inclusivity or to create an index
• Start marketing and selling your book
• Receive your yearbooks sorted by your choice of grade, teacher, or last name which will save you tons of time once they arrive

(We promise, you'll thank us later.)

Step 2: get the word out

With an updated student roster, you can now effectively communicate with your community and launch marketing campaigns that support yearbook building and orders. Examples of communication that will help you build a better book include emails asking for photos, how to purchase books, and special features like creating personalized pages and showing your students/parents how to create e-signatures.

If you really want to ramp up sales and raise awareness of your yearbook project and photo needs, use this month of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter content. There's also a full marketing module in our free yearbook curriculum.

Step 3: collaborate with your community

Following strong communication, you are set up to collaborate on the yearbook with ease. Crowdsource photos from school staff, other parents, coaches, and students.

When possible, assign class pages to others. No yearbook coordinator is an island (or something like that). By building a team, you'll capture more, include more, and stress out less!

Step 4: upload your students' portraits

Whether your elementary school was able to take professional portraits, or you are sourcing portraits from parents, upload these to your yearbook next. Your yearbook provider should have a solution for adding these to your book. You can even use these yearbook spreads to add more content.

Step 5: build your book

Now that you’ve connected with your community and begun sourcing ideas and visuals for your yearbook, you’re ready to select and set up your book themes and styles. In addition to designing your own themes, Treering offers a free library of professionally designed themes. Each theme package includes layouts, font pairings, and graphics to tie your look together. You can also 100% customize your own.

Set spreads aside for

• School events such as fun runs and book fairs
• Sports (If your school doesn't have teams, crowdsource photos of students on their outside sports team)
• Holidays
• Trends
• Clubs
• Class favorites

Build a beautiful yearbook with features like auto-page layouts that magically lay your photos out beautifully on a spread or pre-designed pages that cover the Best of the Year and Year in Review plus student-generated content through fill-ins for a quick elementary school layout.

Step 6: set your yearbook to print ready!

Drop the yearbook and walk away. In all seriousness, hit “print-ready” to send your files to the printers and, if you're using Treering, you'll quickly have your books in hand in three weeks or less! If for any reason you want a little more time, it’s easy to adjust print-ready deadlines too. As the yearbook coordinator, you're in charge!

Step 7: distribute the yearbook and celebrate!

All this work is worth celebrating! Work with your parent group to host a yearbook signing party. It doesn't need to be fancy or cost you additional money; this could be something special like

• Playing music at lunch
• Offering a jeans day to yearbook buyers if you're a uniform school
• Allowing yearbook purchasers to bring a stuffed animal to school
• Setting up signing tables at a year-end school event

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

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

You’re expecting this to be all about brainstorming to increase buy-in, aren’t you? Critiques of brainstorming as ineffective or “the very opposite of synergy” challenge us to take a different approach to choosing a yearbook theme. Try something new this year: ask “What don’t we want in a theme?” 

“Oh snap,” said my eighth-grade self.

This could result in something quite powerful: there’s a leadership movement to replace brainstorming with problem-solving strategies inspired by Einstein. Yes, the Theory of Relativity guy. And “problem” in this context isn’t a crisis, it’s more like a mathematical expression: solve for theme.

Questions to ask when selecting a theme

We have our question: What don’t we want in a yearbook theme? Now, it’s time to find the answers. 

Ask why. And do it five times.

In each of the examples above, students started with their ideas and defined what they wanted to highlight. You may choose to do two or three sets of these to direct your team before narrowing down your theme.

Treering’s nearly 300 themes can provide the visual to align with the story you want to tell (verbal). Here’s what I mean:

Yearbook red flags

Usually, a red flag is a full-on brake moment. Because we are problem-solving to develop a yearbook theme, let’s add some drama. 

1. Trendy or Timeless?

A theme that feels relevant only to the current moment might not resonate with readers in the future. If your theme conveys a you-had-to-be-there vibe, consider how it will be perceived years from now. And whether you want your sigma theme to resonate with your grandkids.

I know. I know. After the trendy theme “problems” above, you thought timeless might be the way to go. Timeless themes might be perceived as "safe," which could stifle creativity*. They often rely on classic or traditional designs, which might lead to a yearbook that lacks innovative or fresh elements that can make it distinguishable from previous years’ books. They also might be beacons of a longstanding tradition.

*PSA: That’s not a reason to ignore design hierarchy. 

2. Themes that are difficult to execute verbally

I’m just going to say it: if you have a visual theme and don’t know how to implement it, you don’t have a complete theme. You have a look. So does my mom.

A complete yearbook theme provides that proverbial lens through which the entire school year is viewed. It helps prioritize content that aligns with the central idea, ensuring that the yearbook tells a cohesive story rather than just a collection of unrelated events. Remember our school that chose POV above?

POV is gorgeous. The included layouts focus on student voices and impactful photography, neither of which works if you only feature a subset of students in the book. To truly convey POV, you need multiple perspectives.

3. Themes that don’t reflect the school’s identity

If the theme feels out of sync with the school’s identity or geography and/or doesn’t capture the essence of the student body, move on. 

This is when you could involve the student body and get that buy-in we previously discussed. Theme surveys help choose the visual identity of your yearbook theme. Our design team put all of Treering’s themes together so you could pare down the selection. (We suggest five or fewer.)

Throughout the school year, some many events and activities might seem unrelated at first glance. An intentional theme helps tie these events together under a common narrative. Visual elements from fonts to graphics, develop that narrative and provide a cohesive look. After you choose yours, check out these additional theme development resources:

(Then again, if theme brainstorming is your jam, check out these questions in the Theme Module of Treering’s free curriculum. We’re that flexible.)

Aside from the release of the annual Year in Review pages, nothing fills our DMs like the fall theme launch. After holding theme focus groups with freshly finished yearbook coordinators and interviews with customer-facing team members, our design team created the largest collection of layouts to date. Treering editors said they wanted the 2024 theme collection to have increased customization, more room for text, and variety in the coordinating layouts and graphics. Yes, yes, and yes.

Many of the 2024 yearbook themes use editable shapes, so yearbook squads can change up the color palette to coordinate with their school colors. You’ll see more caption boxes in the included layouts. Each theme also contains dedicated layouts and graphics for holidays, school events, sports, and academic subjects.

In addition to the ten new yearbook themes below, Treering’s design team added 35 new fonts and 100s of graphics.

"Stick Together" - a design that’s still fire

Stickers have always been and will remain a significant part of contemporary youth culture. They are everywhere: laptops, phone cases, notebooks, and water bottles. Incorporating this concept into the yearbook aligns the design with Gen Z and Gen Alpha students' everyday experiences and interests, making it instantly relatable and engaging. 

Elementary, middle, and high school students will love the playful, whimsical look a sticker-based yearbook theme will give. With over 250+ pieces of art to mix and match, layouts become even more customizable to showcase the personality and energy of your school community.

The modular theme: "POV"

English teachers know POV as a literary device. Students see it on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It’s a concept where content is presented from a specific perspective, often creating a more immersive and engaging experience for viewers.

As a yearbook theme, POV emphasizes storytelling and relatability by framing school events and experiences through student and faculty perspectives. To help, our design team created a full suite of quote-based graphics and 70 modular layouts.

By using modular coverage, you can combine more topics on a spread, which helps more students in the yearbook. It’s a design shift. Using templates can help: by employing professionally designed mods, students see what works and can edit and adjust these to work for them. Then, they can move on to create their own.

Most spirited: "Mascot"

A symbol of identity and school unity, school mascots embody the essence of your school’s identity and values. Why shouldn’t your yearbook reflect that?

Older yearbook classes and clubs may choose to use the mascot to create a narrative of the school year such as, “Through the Eyes of a Lion,” or include their own “Mascot Moments” to tell how the school values come into play day-by-day.

The mascot can also be used to highlight important school traditions, events, and cultural moments, reinforcing its role as a key part of the school’s heritage.

A collage-themed yearbook

With over 65 layouts for school events and activities, “Collage” used photo-realistic graphics for a mixed media effect. The yearbook theme focuses on photography.

The included tapes, papers, and cutouts provide textures and layers. These elements play a major role in enhancing the tactile and visual appeal of the pages. Different textures—like the smoothness of a photo, the roughness of a paper-cut effect, or the subtle grain of a background—can evoke emotions and draw the eye to specific elements. The layers also help to break the monotony of flat images that a traditional grid structure may give a spread.

"Picture This" spotlights students

From the opening act to the closing credits, this vintage Hollywood-inspired yearbook theme is part glamor, part photojournalistic chronicle. 

Some fun spin-offs can include:

• Movie-inspired superlatives
• Renaming your portrait section “cast of characters”
• School hall of fame with science fair, spelling bee, and speech contest winners
• Adding a section of behind-the-scenes fun from picture day and yearbook club meetings

Add in Treering’s custom pages, and every student is truly a star!

"Sketchbook"

It’s a challenge to create a yearbook that appeals to both kindergartners and sixth graders. Or even one that captures the essence of a K-12 school without being too young or too old visually. In one of our focus groups, a Treering editor suggested a yearbook theme that “grows” with students. “Sketchbook” was born from this idea.

The diversity of designs is perfect for young learners in kindergarten and young adults in middle school. The graphics offering “grows” in maturity from chunky to streamlined.

Highlight digital design with a cyber yearbook theme

As esports continue to grow in popularity as an NFHS-recognized sport, the digital design trend will heighten on pace. Ascend to the top of the leaderboard with the included graphics: neon color borders, glitch effects, and digital grids. This creates a striking visual impact that reflects the cyberpunk aesthetic, emphasizing vibrant, high-contrast visuals and futuristic elements.

If your school’s focus is on advancement, Cyber may be the 2024 yearbook theme for you

"Organic Retro"

This design trend blends the charm of vintage aesthetics with a modern, natural twist. It's characterized by earthy tones, organic shapes, and a nostalgic vibe that harkens back to design styles from the 60s and 70s. With retro yearbook themes continuing as a trend in 2024, the “Organic Retro” theme is modern despite its “old school” roots.

The soft, welcoming color palette and bold, organic shapes are non-intrusive and can complement a wide range of photos and content. It can be playful and energetic for casual moments like the Fun Run or more subdued and elegant for formal events like awards night. This flexibility allows the yearbook to capture the full spectrum of school experiences. 

An unfiltered yearbook theme: "Be You"

The design team spends all year cataloging design trends. Social media is usually at the top of the list. To focus on authenticity and the in-the-moment aspect of yearbook reporting, once again, they took inspo from a trending movement and created the largest collection of layouts (90!) attached to a Treering theme. 

The designers love promoting positive messages, thus creating a series of “Be” statements, such as “BeKind,” “BeCurious,” “BeResponsible,” or “BeImaginative.” Pair these with the included emojis to react to the activities and efforts of students on campus.

"Together We Can"

A puzzle visual as a unifying yearbook theme is a powerful metaphor for the school community, emphasizing how each student, teacher, and event plays a crucial role in completing the overall picture of the school year. Piecing together individual contributions to academics and activities with a small cluster of pieces reveals the larger picture as readers turn the pages. This approach can represent how the school year builds over time, with each event, achievement, and memory contributing to the final, complete image at the end of the year.

Bold colors and oversized graphics showcase the big moves and bright spirits across campus. Enjoy pre-designed, drag-and-drop templates for clubs, events, and academic subjects.

How do I use a Treering theme?

Applying a Treering theme is as easy as click, drag, drop, and done.

After applying the theme, you can customize it by adjusting colors, fonts, and layouts. You can also mix and match elements from different themes or the extensive graphics library.