YearBook Publishing And Printing

When you start taking photos for your yearbook you will realize that you need to take a lot of photos until you find those perfect ones. If you are a serious photography enthusiast than you won’t mind snapping away a few hundred photos per week. Actually you will most likely enjoy it a great deal. The likely hood of you snapping a photo that someone might not want to be in the yearbook is likely to happen so you have to be thoughtful of some of the photos you take. Here are some things to avoid when taking photos.

1. Funny Angles: Funny angles can sometimes make your victim look funny or strange. Strange angles also often times leave people in unflattering views. People really do have a good or bad side so it is important to be respectful before publishing a photo that might clearly be of them on their not so best day.

2. Accidental Photos: Sometimes you are going to get photos into the mix of strange or funny things happen that might be embarrassing. These are not yearbook photos, most of the time. You might be clicking away taking photos and someone falls over and you happen to catch it on camera.

3. People Dining: You want to be careful about taking photos of people eating. Many people are very self conscience when they eat so it will be important to be careful when taking photos of people eating and using them in the yearbook.

If you have recently joined the yearbook committee and have been assigned the task of doing all the photography for the book you might want to decide what type of camera you want to use. There are many different cameras for many different occasions. You might already be a photographer with a camera or maybe you have to purchase one for this position. it comes down to two choices either a point and shoot or an SLR.

The point and shoot digital can probably get some great photos but the SLR digital camera is in a league of its own. If you are serious about photography and plan on taking this further than just the yearbook the SLR camera will carry you much further. If you have plans of photographing sporting events at your school you will want to a camera that can operate with a very quick shutter speed in order to capture the image of the game. The SLR will work even for situations like dances where you want to capture students in movement. A point and shoot might not have the full capabilities to really capture the images without blurriness.

Photo quality will be very important for the success of your yearbook. People will remember the different stories through the photos so it is important to capture them the best way possible.

When you start designing your yearbook it will be important to have factors that connect your audience with your yearbook cover. The very first thing that everyone is going to see when they first look at the book and pick it up in their hands is going to be the cover so you will want the cover to have numerous ways a large group of your audience can make an instant connection.

Here are some ways that your audience can connect through your yearbook cover:

1. Colors: Try using colors that connect to your students. Does your school or organization have colors that brand the school? If yes than you shouldn’t use colors that do not exist anywhere at your school.

2. Photos: Try using some photos or even one photo. Pick one that might have really stood out throughout the year. You could even take a very simplistic path and keep it black and white with little graphics depending on the tone of your year book.

3. School Spirit: Think deep to what keeps your student body moving and what they either enjoy or really beleive in. What is most important to the students at your school and expand on it.

Making a connection with the students will be very important for them to want to keep flipping through your yearbook. The more they can connect the more they will talk about how much they enjoy reading through your yearbook.

If you have been given the task to write and come up with a great deal of content try reaching out to your students and ask them what some of their favorite quotes of the year where. You will find that there might be a handful of sayings that just stuck and you could hear students all year long mumbling it down the hall.

Often times there is something funny said out loud during class and maybe nobody wrote it down but someone always remembers it. If you have a page the speaks about a certain student matching a funny or clever quote by that specific student would be a great touch to the copy on that page. There is no rhyme or reason to how these should be visible in the yearbook. You can really choose to position how ever you like. These could very well be scattered around the yearbook for people to read and chuckle as they read through the yearbook.

You could also start planning this early in the year and keep your ears open for something funny that one might say. If you know that you will have certain students that might have their own profiles in the yearbook you could ask them to give you any quotes they have said or even a favorite quote. You could also ask other students who might have classes with that student and ask them to listen out for any good or funny quotes.

When it comes time to pick a theme for your yearbook it can get very challenging. So many different directions and choices to choose from and possible ideas it might get difficult to pick one and run with it. Your team will also most likely have many different ideas for you to choose from so it is important to pick one everyone will enjoy working on it.

Most schools have team mascots and school mascots that brand them a personality. Branding is what most people use to remember anything. Whether it be a clothing line or soda the power of branding goes a long way. Let your yearbook carry the brand of your school or organization. if your school has powerful branding throughout the student body, maybe your mascot is very frequently used or your school has a logo or symbol that they are very fond of try integrating it into your design. Keep the design of your location in mind. If your school is located in a very rural area you don’t want to use city type design for your book. The more you can connect with your audience and surroundings the more of a success your year book will be.

Or maybe your school’s symbol has never really been taken to the next level. Now is your chance to really bring some life back into your school’s symbol or logo. Give it the branding power that might have been swept under the rug for many years.

Finding the right printer for your yearbook project could get very difficult but there are ways to track down the right one and isolate them for your project. Social networking website are a great place to get the truth on any business. Other clients and customers will be more than happy to let others know about their experience with any sort of business.

If you are looking to find someone that will truly help you LinkedIn is a network of business professionals. With the ability of searching the websites for keywords you can track down a printing rep very easily and quickly and have a conversation with them. You could also go straight to websites like Yelp which are designed for reviews. Being one of the largest review websites in existence you could very quickly find some printing companies and know whether others have enjoyed working with them or not.

Sites like this are designed so people can find other businesses that they are confident they want to work with. It is tough putting your projects into the hands of a company or vendor you know nothing about. It is important to find one you trust and be using some of the website mentioned above as tools to help you on your journey to printing your yearbook.

Planning and executing a yearbook takes a great deal of team work and everyone has to be on the same page before any action is performed. Get your team working together by having numerous meetings and events so everyone can brainstorm ideas together.

This will allow a team to work much more closely and efficiently resulting in a great designed yearbook. There are many resources out there so brainstorms ideas. If you are thinking about design go to Barnes & Noble or Borders and find some designs books together and take a look at layouts, styles and colors. Do this together so you can all agree on a design at the same time. This will prevent any future hiccups and disagreements. Design is very subjective but really great design can be appreciated by many. The only way things will stay organized and on track is if everyone is on the same page. You will want the photographer to take photos that compliment the design and you will want the writer to compliment the photos so it will be crucial for everyone to agree.

Make the meetings fun and interesting. They don’t have to be done at school. Meet at the local coffee shop and enjoy the atmosphere while discussing the plans. Have the person in charge bring their laptop if they have one and show everyone the progress of the layout.

When you start designing the layout of your yearbook you will find that you will be torn about where some of your favorite pictures and stories might go. most likely you will have a handful of these dilemmas so you will want to put them in the right order to make them count.

The first few pages of your yearbook is what will capture the attention of your audience and also set the mood for the rest of your yearbook. Your audience will want to see the most interesting and juicy information right up front while you have their complete attention. Try putting a famous school photo right on your opening page. Something that got the students buzzing when they saw it during the year. Or maybe a popular event that happened that year that everyone enjoyed. it is ok to think outside of the typical stuff that you might see in the very beginning of a yearbook like prom and dance stuff.

Maybe your football mascot or a school mascot on one of the first pages filled with some copy about the history of your mascot. Many students can relate and connect with your mascot. It is the brand of your school so it is important to display it.

There are many different binding choices available depending on how many pages your yearbook will have. Each binding gives the reader a different type of experience. It is nice to open the yearbook and smell those freshly printed pages and that nice hard cover and hear the binding crinkle and crack when that first open happens.

Different binding styles have different costs so it will be important to choose the right one for your budget. Lay flat bindings allow you to use a bit more of the space on each page. For yearbooks that have a short page count and space needs to be utilized a lay flat binding option would work well. It would allow the copy and also photos to be brought all the way to the inside edge of each page where other binding options might stop you from getting to close to the inside with fear of cutting pf text and photos. When the yearbook is opened up the pages lay flat allowing for one continuous surface.

With tough economic times right now might be a great time to explore various binding options to keep your costs down as much as possible. traditional bindings can very expensive and generate very little results. Check out lay flat binding when you start to hunt for a new printer for your binding needs.

It is no doubt, right now is a tough time for many budgets at almost every establishment or organization. Fundraisers will have to play a large role in increasing your budget to help pay for your yearbook production. You will have to think outside of the box to get people to make purchases. Besides doing the usual bake sales try these unique ways:

1. Pie Eating Contest: Charge a few dollars for someone to enter. This could be done in conjunction with another event like a sporting event.

2. Move Night: Get your school to set up a large screen in one of the auditoriums and set up a night where students can pay a couple of dollars to come watch some old hit movies or even some new releases. offer to sell some food at the event and you can quickly make a few bucks for your yearbook.

3. Keep the Change: Set up a giant donation jar (one that is difficult to steal) and ask for donations for the yearbook committee. Sure not everyone will donate any spare change but you will get a decent amount of students donating spare change to help the cause.