School Yearbooks

[d2vasquez]

I hesitantly volunteered to help create the yearbook for my dd's school to help out one of our teachers and now this week am on task to get this completed by April 12th. I have a hard time using the same colors or design on more than one page so having to do so for 80 pages just makes me feel like I can't be inspiring. Since I feel a bit overwhelmed about the whole idea - I thought I would see if anyone else had done one or pages for it and could offer suggestions or guidance here.

[Tracyfish]

I just did our elementary one (only 60 pages) and I used lots of bright colors so I wouldn't be pigeon-holed into the school's blue/white color scheme.

As a digi-scrapper it was VERY hard not to over embellish. I tried to make it a fun, clean, simple look with lots of photos.

Good luck! It was definitely something I would do again now that I've gotten used to the software they use (which is nowhere near as easy as PS would have been).

[d2vasquez]

Originally Posted by Tracyfish

I just did our elementary one (only 60 pages) and I used lots of bright colors so I wouldn't be pigeon-holed into the school's blue/white color scheme.

As a digi-scrapper it was VERY hard not to over embellish. I tried to make it a fun, clean, simple look with lots of photos.

Good luck! It was definitely something I would do again now that I've gotten used to the software they use (which is nowhere near as easy as PS would have been).

LOL that is what I am having a hard time - I want to add shadows and this and that but realize it is supposed to be clean like. Funny most of my layouts are filled with white spaces and here for the yearbook I want to embellish everything. Could be that the photos are pretty bad that I am just at a loss on what to to do to improve these.

[Lyd]

I think Penny just did yearbooks for her boys as well, so she might have some suggestions for you.

I've never done it myself, but they did ask me one year. Since I was due to have a newborn baby right when they would have needed me, I politely turned them down. It was a good thing I did too, cause the baby ended up coming a month early and life was HECTIC!!

Good luck, Darla! I'm sure whatever you come up with will be awesome!

[Keely~B]

I did it a couple of years and I agree about the software. It would have been so much easier with PS. I broke it up so that each grade had a theme/palette, it was all cohesive but I didn't do the same thing throughout the whole book. It was an experience, two years was plenty for me LOL

[Tracyfish]

That's what I did Keely. One grade had pencils and books, one had stars, one had paw prints (school mascot is a Panther), etc.

[yari]

I just did the one for my kids' school and I kept it pretty clean and classic. The photos already add so much "embellishment" and it's really what shines. I used Mari's kit School Rules with her permission to make it. I used her papers (her kit is very colorful) to make different backgrounds for the pages and I used her super fun and variable alpha to make titles for the pages. It turned out really fun and colorful.

[Tracyfish]

Love that kit! I bet it turned out super cute Yari! I had the standard clipart that comes with their program...it about killed me to use it. LOL!

[maryinaz]

I did the elementary yearbook for 5 years and that was before I started digi-scrapping. So I made my own background papers on the computer and used a specific color for each grade. The book itself had a theme, so I stuck to that throughout.

The first year I did it it was paper cut/paste - ack! The next year they got digital software. They did have the option to upload an entire page as a jpeg so I did that for some of the event pages. You might check and see if they have that in your software. Since I imported all the student pictures from their database, I could not do that with the class pages.

Good luck - it's a ton of work and I was so completely burnt out after 5 years.

[d2vasquez]

Lol Tracy I am trying to avoid the clipart in the program although I did use it for the cover of the book which turned out beautiful. I am creating the pages outside of the program and importing them as pngs because I created a color palette that matches the cover of the book. The yearbook company just imported my color swatches so I can create some of it in the actual program but it has been slow.....I had each class take their own photos and if I should do this again next year, I will definitely have some guidelines on how to take photos. I am doing some crazy editing to make some of these photos work!

[Sherri Tierney]

I am finishing up our yearbook now. I do all of the pages of candid shots in photoshop and then import them. I made a simple template that I plop photos in to. I try to get as many on the page as possible and use very little embellishments. It's all about the pictures.

Our book has 60 pages and covers 3 schools, preschool through 5th grade. This year I did each school very similar (one page of photos per class) and used different colored background pages for the only difference. One school has yellow, one has blue (school colors) and one has grey since it is a nice neutral. I didn't go too bright because I wanted the pictures to really stand out so even the yellow and blue are muted down.

The temptation is to add all sorts of cute embellishments and stuff but after doing this for 5 years and talking to countless parents about it, the pictures are what they want.