The new school year is underway, and projects like the school yearbook are probably not very high on your to-do list. Making some early decisions about how you will produce your yearbook can save you a lot of time later in the year. While there are lots of design choices to make when it comes to yearbooks, two decisions stand out:
- Do you handle the design process yourself, or do you outsource it to professional designers?
- Will the final product be a print yearbook, an eBook, or both?
IN-HOUSE OR OUTSOURCE?
Spacific Creative offers a complete ‘Custom Designed Yearbook’ service alongside a ‘Design Your Own’ service, both of which are available as print or eBook .
For some schools, the ‘Custom Designed Yearbook’ service is undoubtedly the best option. It not only frees up staff time, but your school gets a bespoke, professionally designed product. From design concepts to delivery of the finished product, we will design and manage every aspect of your yearbook production so you don’t have to.
For those who prefer the DIY approach, our ‘Design Your Own’ online service lets you create your own yearbook with our specialist software that’s easy and fun to use. Schools can upload content as it happens, building up the yearbook organically as the year progresses. This ongoing process reduces the end of year workload and captures the stories and images while they’re still fresh.
Uploading this content to Spacific Creative’s online platform also provides a measure of security, by storing your valuable photos and other assets up in the cloud. However, we strongly recommend that you maintain back-ups of your content in two separate places as well.
Creating your yearbook within the school is also a great way to develop valuable skills amongst both staff and students and encourage more engagement in your school community. You might even find that school activities and art projects are carried out to a higher standard when students know that the results will feature in the yearbook!
WHAT FORMAT?
Deciding early on whether to offer the yearbook in print, eBook, or both will assist with budgeting and can influence the content creation as well. Image quality requirements differ significantly between print and online. Whereas a 72 PPI (pixels per inch) image works fine on a webpage (and loads quickly – an important consideration), the same image in print needs to be 300 DPI (dots per inch), or it’ll look jagged and low quality.
If you’re providing a print version to your students and families, you will need to factor in the print production time to your schedule. Depending on when you plan to deliver the finished product, this could mean that some end-of-year activities don’t ‘make the cut’. If you plan to offer an eBook only edition, you can add content a bit later because there is no print process involved.
As technology develops, expect to see more media-rich solutions for both print and electronic yearbooks in the near future, including enhanced content using augmented reality and embedded video.
To find out more about Spacific Creative’s publishing options, visit our Yearbooks page.
