Yearbook Sections & Design

Tip: Please visit our Creative Insights  blog article to have What To Include In A Yearbook: A Comprehensive Guide 

A basic yearbook will include the following page types:

• a cover (front and back)
• an inside cover: the first page of the book, possibly including a dedication or a mission statement
  and/or a table of contents.
• a message from the principal / administration: photo of the principal, and possible the vice-principal or other administrator with words of welcome or a summary statement for the year.
• staff portraits: portrait grid of the staff. This page may be organized alphabetically by last name, or the staff may be broken into their departments, with office/admin, homeroom teachers, specialists and support staff in separate categories.
• student portraits, organized by homeroom (elementary) or grade (middle, high school). 
• activities and events pages
• autograph page(s).

For additional section ideas, consult the Creative Section Ideas area of this knowledge base.

Pick a theme

Create a palette of 2-3 colors, select a limited range of fonts (title, subtitle, paragraph text).

You can apply the theme book wide, or on a per section basis. For instance, your sports section can be themed to uniform colors, and portrait pages use a single texture of a background in a rainbow of colors.

Don't clutter your page

The focus of your yearbook is the photos and text you use on your page - not all the fun backgrounds and clip art. To keep your book tidy, use Memento Yearbook's layout as a starting point. Many designs include "negative space" around the photos and text, to give the page breathing room and allow the reader to appreciate the content.

Keep areas with text clean, or frame them out with a background shape, so they are legible.  Use only your absolute best photos, as few as possible: every extra photo on a page makes the other photos less impactful. A page cluttered with dozens of photos means that no one person will be visible in any photo - you aren't capturing a memory of a time and place if you can't see any details. 

A cluttered page: too many photos, clipart over the images, and unreadable text on a dark background.	Getting better: using a template to give the page some breathing room improved the visibility of the images, which have been added selectively. Text still is hard to read.	Best: selective images, clear text, simple and easy to enjoy.

Invisible text: using a strong background with text makes it very hard to read.	Use shapes in a coordinating solid color (with reduced transparency too) to make a block around the text.