Choose Your Marketing Strategy

ONE DAY SALE

That’s right, one day! Schools that have tried this report substantial sales compared to longer efforts. Pick a day when there’s no competing activity, and start your promotion activities early.

HIGHLIGHTS

Hold a special school assembly. A popular teacher, coach, or hometown celebrity might share how much his/her yearbook means even years later. Students are asked to sign commitment cards. No money is taken; collection day will follow.

ADVANTAGES

As a group, students generate their own enthusiasm and help sell each other on the idea of buying a yearbook. And because no money is being collected, it’s easy to say “Yes” to buying.

DETAILS

When the assembly leader finishes speaking, the yearbook staff and other pre-selected volunteers hand out commitment cards to each row of students. Each student is asked to complete a card indicating whether or not he/she is ordering a book. The leader guides the students through the card line by line. Cards are passed back to the waiting volunteers. Assembly time: about 15 minutes.

After the assembly, yearbook staff members sort the cards by homeroom and alphabetize them within each homeroom class. They also fill out one card for each student who is absent the day of the assembly, with the notation:

A yearbook has been ordered in your name. To complete this order check the YES box and remit payment. If payment in full is not received within 5 days, the order will be canceled.

EXTRAS

Open the assembly with a digital slideshow sharing photos your staff has taken during the school year of students and school scenes. Add excitement with
pre2.141414recorded music, or with the school band. Involve cheerleaders and other well-known students in the program. Consider well-written, well-rehearsed humorous skits (current movies, TV programs, and commercials provide plenty of idea-starters). Total assembly time should not exceed 30 minutes.

COLLECTION PROCEDURES

If the sale day is Thursday, payment collection day takes place the following Tuesday. (This gives you two school days for P.A. reminders and, with careful planning, the intervening weekend likely contains a payday.) On collection day, preselected yearbook staff members and other volunteers visit each homeroom. During the first 10 minutes of this period, they collect money from each student who signed up with the commitment cards. If you’re concerned about security, enlist parents and other adult volunteers as your collectors. You might also have a security guard accompany you to the bank since all monies will be collected on that one day.

VARIATIONS ON A ONE DAY SALE

Name your sale to emphasize its short duration (i.e., the 60 Minute Sale, the One-Hour Sale, the Six-Hour Sale, etc.).

ONE WEEK SALE

A time-tested plan that works! Schedule a week when competition for students’ attention and dollars will be at a minimum. Put your sales center in a highly visible, high-traffic location, and keep lines short.

HIGHLIGHTS

Start promotion at least a week ahead. Maintain enthusiasm throughout the sale week. Distribute promotional buttons to persons who purchase a yearbook and pay in full. Use a gimmick to build interest throughout the week.

ADVANTAGES

A week-long sale may be preferred by administration and faculty. Also, you can reach students at various times during the day — before classes, after classes, during lunch periods. And students may feel they have more time to come up with the money (which isn’t necessarily true; it just seems that way).

DETAILS

Be sure your sales center has all the necessary materials — order forms and receipts. A staff member should be present at all times to handle questions. Also be sure each volunteer worker understands your payment policy. If you give out after-purchase recognitions (such as buttons), do so only to those who pay in full. Be security conscious. Move receipts to the school office or guarded location at predetermined intervals; an adult volunteer or faculty member may assist in this. If you have more than one sales center, have a roving staff member stop by periodically with additional supplies. Have an adult volunteer or faculty member available to assist with any unforeseen problems or questions.

EXTRAS

Hold an assembly to call attention to the yearbook. Use all the P.A. announcement time you can get. Push hard for last chance sales as the week comes to a close.

COLLECTION PROCEDURES

Collect the money with the order.

VARIATIONS ON A ONE-WEEK SALE

Calculate the actual number of hours that orders will be accepted; i.e., the 20-Hour Sale if you are taking orders Monday through Friday, one hour before and after classes and two hours during lunch period.

Need to conduct your sale before school begins? Mail a series of letters (three is best) directly to parents. Emphasize the importance of ordering before classes start. If you will not accept orders after classes start, say so.

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Light Bulb Moment

Adviser and staff change the way their yearbook takes shape.

His light bulb moment happened in church.

Willamette University’s Cone Chapel to be exact. That was the site for Yearbooks Northwest’s 2015 opening session, and where adviser Chris Wells had a revelation.

“Sitting at Willamette — it was the first camp we’d ever attended ­— we saw these blue boxes and pink things on the screen. It was revolutionary. We realized, ‘This is what we want to do,’” the Cottage Grove High School dean of students and yearbook adviser said. “We wanted to cover all these things, get all these kids in the book and still have the book be beautiful.”

Those blue boxes and pink things are a part of Herff Jones’ Square One™ approach to space allocation and page production modeled after how professional publication designers work. Yearbooks Northwest is one of the Pacific Northwest’s top workshops, and it turns out, was a perfect testing ground, among others around the country, for the pilot.

“Until we switched to work with Herff Jones in 2014, our process was ‘Let’s make stuff look interesting. We like this. We like that.’ We had no rhyme or reason. We had no template for how to make things look cohesive,” the Oregon adviser said.

Seeing Square One™ for only minutes, Wells said he watched his staff members have light bulb moments.

“It was clear. It was design with purpose. It set us on our way.”

Wells and his Lion Tracks staff members produced their 2016 book as part of the Square One™ pilot group, and while they always had natural strengths in coverage, these before-and-after images show the staff’s progression to more refined scale, space use and all-important coverage or more students.

“As a teacher, it made my life easier,” he said. “We can snap spreads together. The approach lets me be more efficient with my time, and the kids are more attentive to their duties. For the designers, for instance, it made it so we didn’t have to think about it. Back in the day (meaning, oh, before May 1, 2017) we had to over think every decision, each spread started almost from scratch. Now, it has become part of our DNA. It’s just what we do.”

2016 LAYOUTS WITH SQUARE ONE™

Wells and his staff already had a well-developed workflow, which was only enhanced by the logical, “real-world” adoption of Square One™ and its modern, grid-based approach to formatting spreads.

“We follow our own set of principles creating modules,” he said. “Save it. Drop it in. Rotate it. Flip it. Once you get something going it just becomes a game of shapes. At first, we were nervous about reusing something. Then, at camp, we saw how leading yearbook staffs and the top magazine designers artfully repurpose to create consistency. As long as the mods are on different pages, it still looks good.”

If you’re worried the approach is hard to learn or takes too much time, don’t be Wells said.

“This is the first year I have four designers. When it finally clicks, one can show the other and say ‘Hey, let’s work together.’ They are able to carry things through because they work together and follow the same principles. Three of the four had never used eDesign before, and three weeks into school they are collaborating and making these beautiful spreads. It’s that simple — if you follow your principles.”

And at Cottage Grove, those principles are clearly outlined.

“We are in our third week of school. We had a week of writing, a week of photo — all my kids have to be able to shoot, write captions, upload and tag images. Now we are into design. It was so quick. Instead of design grinding out over months, I have inexperienced designers churning out pages within a week of actual training.

“The separators are key,” he said referring to the pink strips of paper in Herff Jones’ industry exclusive hands-on packet, and to the pink pop-ins in eDesign and InDesign libraries so named after the graphic design premise of having “separation space” between elements. Separators separate.

“The kids see the spacing, and it’s so nice,” he said. “Then, they just drop modules in. It’s been incredibly quick. It’s always been my goal to get me out of driving the design process, and this is the first year the kids are confident enough to drive it. Finally, I have the inverted pyramid staff structure we hear about at Yearbooks Northwest where the kids are focused on creating that meaningful content, feeding that to leaders, editors and designers and then it comes to me to review before they submit. Square One™ has set all that in motion.”

Lion Tracks staff members design their own modules, sometimes using one from more than 500 supplied examples as their starting points.

“We have come to the conclusion it’s a book done faster, so we can focus on turning zeros on the coverage report to ones. It’s super fast to use the modules and to teach the kids how to create their own following the design principles we’ve learned. I see a lot of original stuff this year, now that they are more confident. We are varying from overly modular (or “digest”) spreads to intentional feature spreads leading into sections. But, our rules still hold true. The separation space between copy packages and dominants, for instance.

“They had no place to start before,” he said. “This gives us that. They see it right away. They reach decisions and regenerate existing ideas to fit the modular spaces. Again, it’s revolutionary. I can have a ‘legit’ staff where the kids can just go get ‘em. I can advise. One of the most foreign things was always setting up all the different components of a page. To have all that at your fingertips gives us time to focus on getting photos and stories. We don’t have to spend late nights trying to get what we want.”

Following their hearts to have an impact on their community, staffers have seen their yearbook can be an instrument for social change by telling more students’ stories and including more student voices ­— making students feel included, important and heard.

“The best thing I realized is Square One™ let us create more than a yearbook,” Wells said. “My staff is now showing kids at our school they matter. It’s bringing kids into feeling a part of the school.”

Chris Wells is in his fifth year advising the Lion Tracks yearbook at Cottage Grove High School in Cottage Grove, OR, where he also teaches graphic design and serves as dean of students. He took over the school’s print media program in 2013, his first experience with yearbook since graduating as the yearbook editor in 1999. A graduate of the University of Oregon with a degree in philosophy, Chris’ pastime has been graphic design and digital illustration for the last 15 years.

Read more yearbook blog stories from advisers like This Little Rectangular Game-Changer and It’s Time for the Talk.

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The Future Starts Here

One professional designer has three JEA/NSPA conventions to thank for his career. So, take note fall convention attendees. You never know which students will find their callings, their careers and their tribes through high school publications. The industry’s next designers, writers and creative directors are probably attending this convention.

On Nov. 8 just after lunch, Kyle Lewis hopped out of his chair and left his office. He returned a minute later carrying a tattered, white cardboard box.

“My mom’s packing up a bunch of my old stuff and gave me these,” he said as he pulled out three yearbooks and three black and white student-made booklets.

A new graphic designer in Herff Jones’ Indianapolis headquarters, his co-workers were of course drawn to the yearbooks, picking on Lewis’ portraits and remarking at how fashion, design and the world changed in 10 years. They took note of how he had served as design editor of his senior book, a post which launched his career.

The books garnered the initial attention, but the soft-cover booklets incited a frenzy of coincidences. They were publications, reports even, of Lewis’ staff’s trips to three consecutive JEA/NSPA conventions.

“To attend the conventions, we raised money for months,” he said. “But the only way the school board would approve the trip was if we made a review of the convention, showing what we had learned. Everyone was responsible for creating content. Some focused on the cities, some on the conventions and some on the competitions.”

As he told the story of the black and white booklets, Lewis’ co-workers realized, excitedly, he enters the Hyatt Regency exhibition hall today returning to the convention as a corporate employee working in the yearbook industry after having attended three consecutive conventions a decade ago as a student.

That dutiful little teenage designer would be shocked, he said, to know instead of working to recap convention goings-on for his principal, his work would be a part of a booth. (Those yellow-tipped banners and photo illustrations are his handiwork, by the way.)

None of this was part of his plan, he said.

“I took journalism my freshman year on accident. I misread the class listing and thought it was a journaling class.”

His co-workers giggled, too.

“At my high school, you took Journalism 101 freshman year, which is one semester of writing and one semester of design and photography. After, we worked on the publications, and I chose newspaper. But we didn’t get a chance to learn new techniques.”

He said JEA/NSPA conventions were worth the fundraising and the additional labor because, “we could learn from professionals and pick up other schools’ books and papers to get inspiration.”

After three years on newspaper staff, Lewis joined the yearbook staff to get more experience. He attended the 2006 convention as design editor of both publications.

“I like working on both,” he said. “With newspapers, you have a daily or weekly publication. With a yearbook or a magazine, you get something that lives beyond that week.”

With a degree from Ball State and a decade of working in the newspaper industry, he’s found his way home.

“I always thought I would work for a newspaper, but always had interest in working for a magazine. Working for Herff Jones is more like that.”

Will you be the next Kyle Lewis?

Open your eyes to possibilities, your mind to interests and make the best of both.

Who knows where you’ll be in 2027?

Read more yearbook blog stories like Love Letter and Yearbook is for Life.

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Staging a Yearbook Rescue

Advisers Jim Govreau and Morgan Miltner both submitted their final yearbooks March 9. But, they still have a book to complete.

Govreau, of Newsome High School, and Miltner, Strawberry Crest High School, both in Hillsborough County, Florida, and their staffs teamed up to do the impossible — create an entire book in two weeks for a neighboring school in need.

With no cover, no pages submitted and an adviser who started in the second semester with no yearbook experience, the Tampa area staff was about to finish the year without a yearbook.

“Morris Pate, my rep, talked to me about the situation early in the school year, and I visited the school in December,” Govreau said. “The computers weren’t great, there were about four or five students on staff, and nothing was completed.”

By mid-March, the staff had some photos from the school photographer on CDs, but that was it. Pate brought the story back to Miltner’s and Govreau’s attention.

They knew they needed to stage a rescue.

“My first thought was to throw my students at it,” Miltner said. “I have 66 on staff, why not send them to help. That was late Tuesday night. I talked to everyone and asked what they thought. At first the kids thought I was crazy, but then they said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”

Ten of Miltner’s staffers and four of Govreau’s took a field trip on March 29 to remedy the situation. The advisers worked on eDesign from their respective schools while staffers traveled to the school to gather content and put the book together.

“I was watching eDesign and I texted them at one point and I said, ‘Stop writing.’ We can’t spend any more time writing. We need to get photos in there now,” Miltner said. “We have so many rules and requirements for every spread, every caption, everything has to be done journalistically. It was hard for them to stop doing what they are used to so the work would be done quickly. It was amazing to see them making game-time decisions on how things would be covered and how the spreads would take shape.”

Both Govreau and Miltner teach journalism curricula and produce what we know as data-driven yearbooks. Staffs monitor and measure coverage by comparing student rosters to sources included. They also determine topics and structure using real-time student preferences. So, there’s a process.

“This is much more than a basic ‘picture book,’” Herff Jones Hall of Fame member Pate said. “These kids’ pride wouldn’t allow them to do that.”

Pate said his advisers also know students today demand new plot lines. They and their students follow Herff Jones’ “Zero/Zeros” practice and Square One™ design approach, ensuring as many students as possible are included. They believe every student has a story and both say they feel the responsibility to tell those stories.

Because of this training, photographer and first-year Newsome staffer Elliot Morgan volunteered right away.

“I said I wouldn’t mind going and helping these people out,” the senior said. “I know our staff is capable, great writers and overall great people. And I know from going to events with Strawberry Crest, they are the same. I knew we could put this together and make something lasting for the school.”

On March 27, the now-combined yearbook staffs uploaded portrait pages. By lunchtime, two days later, they had submitted 72 pages. Give them a couple more days, and the book will be completely done.

“When we saw all of the spreads were empty, we were shocked something like that could even happen,” Newsome editor Ashley Arndt said. “Mr. Govreau asked if we were willing to help, if there was anything we thought we could do. At first, I thought one day wouldn’t be enough. Once we started breaking it down though, it became a lot more manageable.”

Miltner said the students were nervous to go into a school where they did not know anyone and roam the halls, pulling students out of class for interviews and photos. But as they got to work, they started having fun.

“Students would come in the classroom throughout the day and look at the computer, and I would ask if they were affiliated with the sport I was working on,” Arndt said. “Even if they weren’t, they would give me the phone number of someone who was. So, I have random people’s phone numbers from the school now from asking for interviews.”

The community took note.

“They arranged the yearbook dream team,” Pate said. “They fought through nightmarish, rush hour Tampa traffic, organized themselves, took photos, conducted interviews, wrote stories, headlines and captions, assembled pages, dazzled the administration, faculty and students, and by about 4:00 p.m. had pretty much completed a yearbook.”

It sounds like a lot to ask from high schoolers, but these aren’t just high schoolers. They are yearbookers.

“We have a culture in the program,” Miltner said. “You are part of something bigger.”

Read more yearbook blog stories like When the Struggle is Real, Adapt and It’s Time for the Talk.

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Love Letter

ANNIVERSARY YEARS ARE OFTEN YEARBOOK TRAPS. ADMINISTRATORS WANT A HISTORY BOOK, BUT THAT COULD LEAD STAFFERS TO OVERLOOK STUDENTS AND FACULTY MEMBERS CURRENTLY WALKING THEIR HALLS.

In the case from a Square One^TM pilot staff in Florida, leaders not only decided to celebrate the bond students share, but to do so in a format they had never tried.

They embraced a blended approach to content, meaning modules with clear separation space fill spreads as they fit together physically, but without unifying topics. Coverage and topics blend together to mirror the lives and schedules of students.

“I wanted to do blended coverage because I am always open to change. Why not be different?” Editor Taylor San Miguel said.

“In the past, we didn’t get to cover certain programs as much as we’d like. Using modular design with Square One^TM and following a blended approach opened up so much in the book. We were able to cover everything.”

Like everything, everything.

When you’re a new staffer, doing full spreads on a single topic is just so much. How are you going to fill the spread and put something new and interesting there when sometimes there isn’t something new and interesting?

This way, we develop a mod around a dominant story to give it more space of its own. The reader goes there first, then naturally it goes along eyelines and separators to see the other packages or mods. If the coverage you have planned doesn’t work out — you don’t get great photos or the story doesn’t turn out to be interesting — you can just change that coverage out with another mod about another topic.

A group of seniors sat in the hall crying when they saw the book for the first time. Those seniors cried enough for the whole school. Seeing the book — it was so different than before — people liked that this way of doing the spreads gave more attention to more people. And, it looks more modern.

Everyone should be equally represented because the first thing everyone does is look for their names, and when they are featured on more than two pages, it’s a great gift.

Even the teachers loved the coverage. A coach originally said her team wasn’t covered enough because she was expecting to see a spread devoted to the team, like our old yearbooks. But I showed her all the mods scattered throughout. She was impressed!

That’s the goal of blended coverage. You have to look through the whole book to find yourself and, in the process, appreciate the whole school. It takes some getting used to. But, you notice kids are paying attention to coverage they never noticed before. Because chemistry may be on the same spread as soccer.

Blended coverage makes the process so much easier. You can make spreads multiply.

Just flip one in each direction. Then, you have many different looks to start with. Readers won’t notice the templates are flipped because you won’t put those spreads next to each other on the ladder. They notice the pretty pictures and clever headlines, and that’s it. And, of course, they notice all the coverage.

“Yearbook is an art.
It’s journalistic in style, writing, photography, design. You’re not going to please everybody. That’s just how life is.”

Read more yearbook blog stories like This Little Rectangular Game-Changer and It’s Time for the Talk.

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Examples of Type that Works

The Tiger, Texas HS, Texarkana, TX

• The spread combines a serif font with a sans serif. The serif is used sparingly as a contrasting display type, both in size and in color. The main word head is in the serif font and the rest of the headline is the sans serif font.
• The designer uses the same serif font — and in the same color — for the large initial letter that acts as a reader entry point on the copy.
• The sans serif font in a bold weight was used for the secondary headline, the secondary package quote and the caption lead ins.
• Notice how all the copy and captions are set in the sans serif font and they are not justified. This gives the design a more casual, contemporary look, more like a magazine. Serifs and justified type give designs a more formal, traditional look.
• Look how the designer echoed the style of the primary headline for the secondary quote package. It uses the same combination of serif and sans serif plus the same colors as the main headline. But it’s smaller, signaling to the reader that it is less important than the main headline/copy package.

Templar, Temple City HS, Temple City, CA

• This spread is a good example of a unified look through the use of one font. Everything is set in the same sans serif font. The designer uses color, capitalization and italic type to give the spread variety.
• Check out how the designer created a similar look for the primary headline package and for the two secondary packages by using the same capitalization pattern and the same colors. Using all capitals means not having to worry about working around ascenders and descenders. The use of this thin sans serif keeps the all-capitals pattern from being too overpowering.
• Look at how the spacing of the display type also gives the packages a unified design. In each of the headline packages, there is little or no leading and the words are arranged without spaces. Color becomes the way the readers can distinguish between words.
• This spread is also a good example of visual hierarchy. The most important headline, the one packaged with the main copy, is the largest. The second most important, LOOK (in the lower left corner), is smaller and echoes the primary headline visually and verbally. The HOW DO I LOOK package is smaller still, so it’s even less important. The least important, DISCOVER, is the smallest headline and, because the main word is a gray screen, it emphasizes its place at the bottom of the hierarchy. Again it echoes the primary headline both visually and verbally.
• The secondary headline is extended to provide a clear, lengthy overview of the story. It’s set off from the copy by alignment, plus it’s a larger point size, a heavier weight and italicized.
• It’s easy to distinguish the captions for the main photos from the secondary HOW DO I LOOK package because the main captions have more leading.

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Yearbook Spread Anatomy

12 Elements of Yearbook Spread Design

1. DOUBLE-PAGE SPREAD

A double-page spread is made of two pages, one left (even page number) and one right (odd page number). The gutter is where the two pages join together. Always design as double-page spreads.

2. EXTERNAL MARGINS

Set adequate external margins. External margins work like a frame around a picture. The top and side external margins should always be an equal number of picas.

3. BOTTOM EXTERNAL MARGINS

The bottom external margin should be at least 2-3 picas larger. It acts as a foundation for the spread content and allows room for the folios.

4. FOLIOS

The folios are page numbers and reader reference information usually placed in the bottom margin. They should be as specific as possible; use spread content, not section labels.

5. STRUCTURE

On this spread, grids were used as the structure. Grids are nothing more than narrow columns. The grids are all the same number of picas wide. Remember the same structure should be used throughout the entire book for visual consistency. Notice the grids are separated by a half a pica instead of the traditional one pica. This adds a very contemporary look to the spread and is one of the newest looks in yearbook today.

6. EYELINE

The eyeline is a horizontal guideline that runs across the spread. It helps visually unify the spread and is used as a place to start or end content elements. The eyeline should never be placed in the exact middle of the spread.

7. PHOTO PACKAGE

The cluster of candid photos is always anchored by a dominant photo. Usually, a variety of candid photos with different shapes and sizes works best. Notice that eleven candid photos were used by scaling down the size of all photos in the tight package. Scale is paramount when packaging photos if the designer wants a large number of photos.

8. COPY PACKAGE

A primary headline, secondary headline and copy block (story) make up the copy package. In most cases, the verbal message of the headline should tie to the visual image in the dominant photo. The secondary headline acts as a bridge between the primary headline and the copy block.

9. CAPTIONS

Group captions are used with this type of photo package, as traditional caption placement doesn’t work. When using group captions, it is imperative that the reader can easily tell which caption goes with which photo. There also needs to be a clear reader entry point for each caption. Use this quick caption writing checklist to help write your captions.

10. SECONDARY COVERAGE

Adding secondary coverage to the spread makes content more dimensional. Including more layers of coverage enables the staff to tell a more complete story of the year. Secondary coverage should change from spread to spread to add both coverage and visual variety.

11. WHITE SPACE

Using planned white space as a graphic element is very effective for contemporary looking design. A horizontal and vertical grid of white space is used to separate and highlight the copy block as well as the secondary coverage quote package.

12. GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

Notice that the type is coordinated. All the display type is the same font, weight, capitalization pattern and color, which visually ties the spread together.

Contributed by:
Paul Ender
Herff Jones Special Consultant
Former JEA Yearbook Adviser of the Year

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Better By Design

Design Principles for Yearbook Designers

When someone aspires to be a great writer, everyone is quick with advice: “Read. Read a lot. Read as much as you can. Read work by as many different writers as you can.” And do you know what? That is excellent advice for those who want to become great designers, too. Let’s translate it into the world of design: “Look at the world around you. Pay attention to what is already being done. Look at every design on as many levels as you can. Look at designs to figure out what makes them work… and try to remember all that you have seen.”

The best way to improve your design skills is to strengthen your visual memory. The more images you can call up when you face a design problem, the better off you will be. And, as you begin to look at more work by more designers, you will notice that there are four very important principles of design that are rarely ignored.

Voice

In order for a publication to have a consistent personality (voice); designers do more than simply strive for a classic look or one that’s clearly avant-garde. In addition to creating a unified look that holds the book or coverage package together, it is important to have enough variations that the readers do not get bored.

Too much variety is not good either, and the various options should present a harmonious and cohesive vision.

Scale

Keeping the scale of your work comfortable is an easy thing to do, but it’s something that designers who are too literal when they “borrow” from other sources often forget. As journalists who are creating a permanent record for a school community, yearbook designers often have to consider content elements that the pros don’t bother with. Complete yearbook captions are often longer than those in the professional press and few other designers deal with group shots, scoreboards or membership factoids.

As you add more elements, remember that you may need to adjust the sizes of some pieces. Even if the headline and copy ran across five columns in the magazine, you may find that you need to decrease to three columns of copy in order to include a photo package that is appropriate for your needs. A visual hierarchy is imperative; the readers should know where to look first and should be able to determine which elements are “next most important” as they work their way around a spread.

Space

Beginning designers often succumb to the urge to fill every inch of the page. When there is no logical content, they will often add clip art or graphics to fill the white space that makes them uncomfortable. White space is an important element of design, beginning with the external margins on the spread. The margins in respected publications have been increasing in recent years; this move is based on research that shows readers spend more time on pages that allow their eyes a comfortable space to rest.

While consistent internal margins are crucial to a well-designed publication, there will also be times when an experienced designer makes a conscious decision to use additional white space in the interior of the spread. Keen observers will note that this is done with the intent of showcasing one element or creating a clear division between one part of the visual package and another. Successful use of planned white space usually includes a consistent measure (often a gridwidth) used both vertically and horizontally as a reminder that the treatment was intentional.

Relationship

The best designers make certain that even casual readers can see that elements are repeated visually because they are related. They create linkage with consistent usage of type, white space and graphics in a package, section or publication.

Great designers understand the importance of visual variety and provide options for a mix of content components as well as those with vertical and horizontal shapes. Their first decisions regard the way they will tell the story, and then they deal with actually arranging the elements on the page.

A sense of balance creates spreads that seem to fit comfortably — both on their own and with each other.

Once you master these four principles, you may find that you have more success straying from the formulaic guidelines for basic yearbook design. It might seem that you can “copy” from other publications with greater success or that your experimental designs are suddenly acceptable in the eyes of the most pragmatic editor or traditional adviser.

The difference between a solid design that is technically “correct” and a spread that really wows the readers is often very subtle. While many designers who attempt to do new things discard the foundations of good design, truly great designers maintain those principles as they break ground by playing with new ideas.

Contributed by:
Paul Ender
Herff Jones Special Consultant
Former JEA Yearbook Adviser of the Year

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Building a Yearbook Spread

These fundamentals of design can help ensure the success of any designer’s work; when you get to the point where you feel experienced enough to experiment, remember the reasons behind these guidelines (and “fix” every rule you break!)

Spread Structure

Before placing the elements on the pages, you’ll need to make some book-wide decisions regarding the structure of the spreads. The layout sheets or templates show you several possibilities (or you may want to make adjustments).

The external margins on the templates provide a safety zone of a couple of picas, but most design experts prefer a wider margin that frames the page (4-5 picas look great, with 6-8 pica margins on the bottom of the spread). The margins should not vary through the book, so this decision should be made before the first template is opened; this way, your external margin will be the same throughout the book. Other structural consistencies would include the number of columns you use and the internal margin between columns or grids.

Eyeline

Arapahoe HS, Arapahoe, CA

Before you start placing the elements on your pages, it’s also important to consider an eyeline. An eyeline helps unify your spread and increases the chances that a design will be effective. To create a single eyeline on a spread, simply pull down guides to create a consistent internal margin running horizontally across both pages of the spread. Use the guidelines to start and end elements; the spread’s eyeline is formed by aligning design elements horizontally so the consistent internal spacing extends most or all the way across the spread.

Two important things to remember about using an eyeline: first, it should never fall exactly in the middle of a spread since that would visually divide the spread in half. In addition, you will not want to break your eyeline more than once (otherwise, it will decrease its impact).

Dominant Photo

Corning Painted Post HS, Corning, NY

Photos are usually the strongest visual element in your yearbook. When designing your spreads, select the best photo, both in terms of its story-telling power and technical quality. The best image should become the dominant photo and should be at least two and a half times larger than any other photos on the spread. It should be the first element placed on your spread. The subject and action of your dominant photo should direct the eye to the center of your spread. Action shots should lead onto the page, not off. Never cut faces in half by placing them in or near the gutter. The dominant is often the one photo that violates the eyeline by extending to the top or bottom external margin.

Copy/Headline Unit

West Henderson HS, Mountain Home, NC

Before you place additional photos, you’ll want to add your copy/headline unit. More often than not, the attention-grabbing main headline and the smaller, fact-filled secondary headline are positioned above the columns of the copy block to form a rectangle. This type package is generally positioned to the outside of the spread and it typically either falls below or rests on the eyeline. See headline writing tips here.

Supporting Photo

Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA

As you place supporting photos, you will work to use a variety of sizes and shapes of photos and to maintain consistent internal margins. In the strongest layouts, all photos will be clustered together toward the center of the layout.

Captions

Carlson HS, Gibralter, MI

Captions are placed to the outside corners of the photo cluster, adjacent to the photos they describe (so it’s obvious which caption goes with each photo). All captions on a spread should be a consistent width and not trapped between photos. While traditional guidelines suggest that no more than two captions should be stacked together, many yearbooks use group captions like those seen in contemporary magazines. If your staff decides to use group captions, that should be a sectional decision rather than one designer’s prerogative and it’s crucial that each complete caption have some sort of starter or lead-in. See caption writing tips here.

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The MIT Brass Rat

Every college ring tells a story, but for some institutions, that story is part of a beloved tradition.

The history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) senior ring, known as the Brass Rat, dates back to 1929. The then senior class president formed the first-ever student ring committee to design a ring for the Class of 1930. Today, that tradition continues. Each ring committee is tasked with designing a unique style that represents the graduating class. While some design elements – like a beaver, the university’s mascot, and the Boston skyline — are ever-present year after year, other aspects change with each committee as a way to represent their journey at MIT.

In recent years, Herff Jones has had the honor of manufacturing the Brass Rat, as MIT’s official jewelry provider. The video below shows MIT’s ring process featuring the Herff Jones design and manufacturing process.

This video was produced by Melanie Gonick with MIT News.

Learn more about the ring committee and purchase your Brass Rat. Or, check out Brass Rat accessories.

VIEW COLLEGE RING CATALOG SHOP YOUR COLLEGE RING

Video transcript:

When you think about M.I.T., most people immediately jump into science and engineering but there’s a lot of things that make M.I.T. unique, and probably the most iconic and amazing tradition that M.I.T. has is the brass rat. The brass rat is a class ring that MIT gives to its students at the end of their sophomore year, and they wear for the rest of their lives.

The tradition of the brass rat actually began back in 1929 and there has been a committee of 12 students chosen every year to design the brass rat ever since.

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