Commemorating a school year through a book is the best way to preserve memories of events and activities during that year that are worth remembering. Middle school is special as it marks the first real transition into young adulthood. While middle school yearbooks are not as popular as high school yearbook, many schools have now hopped onto the bandwagon of publishing middle school yearbooks.

Generally, a lot of students find middle school awful, but it can also be the best fun time in your entire school life. Usually, there are many social issues with students, intimidation, bullies, and bad teachers. Through it all, keeping a positive attitude and hanging out with the right company is a sure way to make your middle school years a memorable experience worth preserving in a yearbook.

Creating One

When creating a middle school yearbook, start by deliberating about a suitable theme that embodies the school’s values. Find an idea that glorifies your school and work around that for a fitting theme.

Next is to decide on the writing type to be used in the book. If you’re basically going to use a report format that chronicles the major school events and activities of the year, then you should consider straight reporting type. However, many people like to use mood copy to express emotions backed up by graphics, quotes, and photos, among other things. So choose your writing type based on what you want to convey.

After settling on a writing style, you’re now going to work on the pictures and these can be a lot. Basically, pictures are sourced from any type of school activity, be it a sporting event, class activity, parties, or any other day-to-day activity. Many people like to incorporate childhood pictures so it’s really up to you whether to add them or not. Needless to say, pictures that might embarrass students or the school should be left out.

Worth mentioning is the color of the book. After all, color says a lot about the school and, in fact, it’s better to choose colors that are close to the school’s official colors. You can highlight the school emblem or logo using colors to add a touch of perfection. In the same regard, including a good slogan is a nice way to welcome viewers. There are so many slogan ideas if you’re creative.

Finally, throw in a couple of catch phrases or funny words from teachers and students. If you can’t remember any funny or catch phrases, you can use some classic yearbook quotes.

These few tips on creating middle school yearbooks should give you a good starting point for your yearbook project. Keep an open mind and incorporate as many new ideas as is feasible.

A yearbook is supposed to be a place for memories, but truthfully, some yearbooks are worth forgetting. A dull, unexciting year book is easily forgotten as it will not bring out special memories of former classmates and friends with whom you shared those memorable high school years.




There are two important things that make a yearbook stand out and memorable – yearbook design and layout.


Design

Yearbook design is arguably the most crucial aspect when creating a yearbook. Ideally, an open-minded approach to yearbook design is the best. Sticking to stereotypes and classics may limit your ideas and hence, you end up with a dull design. If you’re stuck with the design, use a grade level survey to get ideas. When you tally the survey results, look out for responses that overlap. Since yearbooks are normally categorized by grade, you can have a unique design for each grade depending on how the students responded.

Another great way to come up with design ideas is by portraying any of the big events you had during that school year on paper. A memorable event is worth being portrayed on paper and this can be a great design idea that will constantly bring back memories of that event several years later.


Layout

The second most crucial thing is yearbook layout. Incidentally, layout and design go hand in hand, so when you get the perfect match for both, you’ll create a truly memorable yearbook. A yearbook layout should match with the theme of the yearbook. While many considerations are made for the layout, there are a couple of important ones that shouldn’t be missed, including the following:

• There should be one topic per page. When you try to include several things and themes onto a single page, it will look messy and untidy.
• You should leave out some white space as it helps to highlight a picture. So, don’t be afraid to incorporate white space.
• Don’t use too many font types on a single page. Ideally, you should use one font type to make your book look professional.
• Keep the number of pictures per page to five. Pictures play a crucial role in a good yearbook layout. For this reason, you must put careful thought into both the quality and quantity of pictures that go on a page. That said, this rule is not written in stone as there are many creative layouts that have been designed. You can tweak the presentation and number of pictures in a spread appropriately.

These quick tips should give you a good start for your yearbook layout and design. You can tweak a few things if you’re creative enough but generally, using these tips will create a yearbook worth remembering.