Top 4 Ways to Get Yearbook Inspiration

A new school year is rapidly approaching, which means that new yearbook projects are about to commence in schools all across the country. Whether this is your first yearbook committee or your 30th, you likely want to come up with an original approach that excites students, parents, and administrators while staying true to your school’s unique identity. This is often much easier said than done.

As a yearbook company, we help our clients create yearbooks all the time. Still, we never cease to be amazed at the creativity that schools and their yearbook teams display! The possibilities are truly endless. While that can be intimidating, there are a few ways to help narrow down your options and develop creative yearbook ideas that both students and parents will love. Read on to check our our top four ways to get yearbook inspiration!

1. Come up with a guiding theme ASAP!

When you’re starting from square one, you’re working with every creative possibility under the sun. If you have a guiding theme for your yearbook, though, it’ll be much easier to focus your ideas and get the ball rolling. Even better, the whole school can be involved in finding a yearbook theme! Consider creating a ballot with preselected theme options or even starting a contest that allows students to submit their own yearbook theme ideas. This will give students more agency over the end result while drumming up excitement for the yearbook early on.

2. Create a vision board.

As you and your committee brainstorm yearbook ideas, consider creating a vision board that collects and presents the team’s favorite ideas in a clear and organized fashion. This vision board could be physical, but it may be even better to have a digital “board” that everyone can contribute to. Whether this is a shared online drive, a website like Pinterest, or an online yearbook tool, compiling your best ideas will help you and your team better discern which ideas will eventually rise above the rest.

3. Explore all of your options.

If this is the first yearbook you’ve worked on, you may not even know about all the design options that are available to you. At Entourage Yearbooks, for example, you can choose from hundreds of prebuilt templates and designs in our online yearbook software. These can often serve as the perfect springboard for your team’s unique vision while also ultimately making the production process much faster and smoother.

4. Look to the past for inspiration.

Your team is not creating a yearbook in a vacuum. Countless yearbooks are produced every year. Feel free to look to them for inspiration, as well. You may even want to consider looking back at your school’s previous yearbooks. Iterating upon those themes and ideas can help you and your team really capture your school’s unique identity. If you look back far enough, you could even come upon some retro inspiration for your yearbook – that’ll be sure to delight parents and administrators! We hope these tips gave you some direction as you and your team brainstorm yearbook ideas. To learn more about how Entourage Yearbooks can help your school’s next yearbook come to fruition, contact us online or call us at 609-452-2665 today!