A Step-By-Step Guide for Planning a Yearbook

Feeling a little overwhelmed at the idea of building an entire yearbook? Here are eight easy steps to get you over the start line on your way to a successful yearbook project.

Step 1: Build a Team

Manage your team by adding users to Memento Yearbook: teachers, parents, and students can contribute to your project with design assistance and photo contributions. If you plan on creating special sections, such as superlatives, baby pictures, surveys on popular trends with your students, or run a yearbook cover design contest, collaborators can help you gather the resources necessary to build these special pages. Enlist a proofreader or two, and make sure that you know who has final sign-off on your book.

Step 2: Yearbook Ladder Planning

Create sections to organize your book into smaller, manageable projects. 

• Consult past yearbooks and your school calendar to decide what activities, events and groups will be included in the book. Access our handy section guide to help you select the topics to include in your book. 
• Add sections to your ladder to group pages together. Feel free to download our ladder planner pdf to help you decide the order you want to present the pages. For example, create a section for the staff pages, clubs, sport teams, arts & performances, senior class memories, special activities, etc.
  Important: add placeholder sections for your portrait pages, but don't add pages to those sections until you are ready to flow the portraits in. Memento will automatically generate those pages when you use the portrait wizard. 

Step 3: Photo Collection

Set up Yearbook Photo Albums to match your sections and/or page topics, then upload any photos you have on hand. If you need to get photos from your school community, use the Community Albums to receive photos from people not working directly on the yearbook.

Step 4: Create a Simple Design Plan

Keeping your design plan simple is an effective way to manage your production time. The more decisions made before page design begins, the quicker you can build your book.

• Choose a theme for your entire book or for individual sections. (Check out the Studio Source Graphic LIbrary‘s theme collections for inspiration!)
• Create a simple 2-4 color palette, or focus on your school’s colors.
• Preselect a small collection of coordinating backgrounds. Use one style per section or theme the entire book.
• Limit your clipart to a specific style or theme to avoid clutter.
• Select a font styling for your page titles and paragraph text, either on a per-section basis or for the entire book.

Step 5: Import Portraits

Import your portraits with their database file then make any necessary changes to your portrait database (typo corrections, adding/moving students to new classrooms or grades, etc.). By having information attached to your portraits, you’ll be able to use special tools to auto-format your portrait pages into alphabetized, labelled grids.

Step 6: Design Your Pages

Flow your portrait pages into your book and build candid layouts. Page creation can be as simple as using basic Memento layouts with your photos for a clean and simple book, or you can create your own personal work of art with decorative elements, themed backgrounds and photo effects. 

Step 7: Proof and Submit Your Book

Memento Yearbook includes internal page reviewing and commenting to help make proofing team-built books easier. After all your pages are ready to move forwards towards printing, then the Editor-in-Chief may formally submit the book. Your publisher may offer access to Memento's own proofing system allowing you to review your book for final sign-off, or they may offer another tool or service.

Schedule everything!

The path to a successful yearbook starts with a good schedule. On a dedicated calendar or spreadsheet, work backwards from your end goals. 

• By what date must your printed yearbook be distributed? (e.g. last day of school, 2nd-to-last week before the end of school)
• When must your completed yearbook be submitted to the printing company to make the distribution deadline?
• When must your yearbook cover be submitted to your printing company (if your cover is sent on a separate deadline)?
• When must you provide your yearbook company the final number of books to be printed?

With these four important deadlines set, you can then build a book production schedule so they can be met.

• First, determine what sections need to go into your book. Use past yearbooks and your current and last year's school calendars to build a list of events & activities.
• Second, assign content providers and photographers to events that occur at a particular time and place. Set reminders to ensure that they attend the event, get the info and photos needed, and that their work is transmitted to the yearbook design team. Text may be emailed, and photos may be uploaded to dedicated Community Photo Albums without needing to log into Memento Yearbook.
• For general activities or fun pages, set deadlines for contributions. For example, make sure that homeroom teachers are invited to send photos to a Community Photo Album by a particular date, or that students collecting graduate quotes have the text collected and typed up well in advance of the design team's need for the content.
• If you are running cover design contests, photo contests, fundraising raffles, or other similar activities, add these to the calendar and make sure that the people planning them are given at least a couple of weeks to pull together the materials & distribution lists required.
• Stagger page/section deadlines, then send these for proofreading. Rather than dump an entire yearbook onto one person for proofreading, send pdf versions of pages or sections to one or more persons to review as they are completed. For instance, send homeroom teachers student portrait pages for name verification as soon as those pages are available. Build fall events pages before the holiday break and have them completed before the winter term starts. You can mark completed pages as approved and not worry about them again.
• Set a deadline of at least one week prior to submission deadline to complete all pages in the book. These should be sent for final proofreading and to the school's staff coordinator and/or the principal for final sign-off.

A marketing/fundraising schedule may also be required if you need to sell the books or raise money:

• When is the first all-school public assembly? You can announce yearbook sales periods and drum up interest.
• Set your sales periods and announce these at least a week in advance.
• Create your marketing materials well in advance - posters, flyers, email messages, social media posts, website banners, order forms & receipts. If your yearbook company does not have pre-made materials to share with you, remember you will not only have to create the content, but also proofread it and have it approved for distribution by your staff coordinator. Give lots of time on the schedule to prep then distribute marketing info, and stick to your deadlines for sales.
• Finalize plans for sponsor and parent ad sales, including target lists, and placement order. When does the sales campaign start and when is the last day to purchase an ad?
• Establish firm rules for the handling of money and supervision of ledgers and deposits.