12 Tips For The New Adviser

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CREATE THE YEARBOOK Most yearbooks have a name (some do not). Each volume of the yearbook tells the story of that school year. To help tell that story, staffs come up with themes. A theme is usually a phrase plus graphic elements. It’s used on the cover, endsheets, title page and divider pages. To guide students in brainstorming for and developing their theme, use the “Finding Your Theme” unit of the Yearbook Suite . They can also get help with their theme and cover with the Yearbook Blueprint in the Planning Kit or at yearbookhelp.com. The ladder is the map of your coverage plans for the year. It will help you make sure events don’t get missed, but it needs to be flexible to allow for events not yet on the school calendar. Consider asking your rep to sit down with you to help plan your first ladder, to make sure you are meeting deadlines correctly. The ladder is a diagram of signatures and flats. Yearbooks are printed 16 pages at a time. Each 16-page section is called a signature. Each signature is divided into two flats, A and B. Write the topic and other information that will go on each page on the ladder. Start by writing in the essentials that must be in the book — title page, table of contents, divider pages, colophon, index and possibly ads. Now you have an idea of how many pages will be used for these structural components. Then estimate your section lengths (look at previous books if you have no idea), and begin to piece together how your book will look. Generally, these are the percentage of pages devoted to traditional sections of a yearbook: student life: 20-25%; clubs/activities: 12-15%; academics: 10-15%; sports: 18-22%; people: 22-28%; ads/community (depends on number and size of ads sold). If you use a chronological coverage structure, your sections can be more evenly divided by week, month or season. When filling out the ladder, start thinking about deadlines. Once you know your submission deadlines, look at the school calendar to determine which pages can be completed prior to your deadlines. When your submission deadlines are set, create mini-deadlines to give staff time to cover events, do interviews, take photos, write stories, design spreads, and have everything proofread. Mini-deadlines keep students organized and feeling less overwhelmed because they accomplish a spread in pieces rather than tackling the entire thing at once. Spread these deadlines over a four- to five-week period.

Photo by Madelyn Cramp

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