Yearbook theme ideas – Retro-mania

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Yearbook theme design ideas retroMy mum keeps telling me that everything goes full circle – flares, skinny jeans and mini-skirts, retro toys such as bouncy hoppers, retro computer games being brought back in 3D, even growing your own fruit and veg. Retro artwork and yearbook design is no different – it’s hip to be retro!

Retro yearbook design ideas can be found in loads of places, old books and magazines your family are hoarding in their loft or even on the shop shelves, as retro has brought back some classics. A good tip for retro design is think simple – simple shapes such as circles, squares and stars. Simple fonts such as a typewriter-style or LED font for your yearbook text (here are some fonts to give you more ideas) you could even feature a typewriter on your page.

Colours can be bold or muted (or a mixture of both), yellows, oranges and browns are popular retro colours. Or you could pick your favourite colour and use different shades together, for example, a light blue background, mid-tone blue for page artwork and dark blue text. Mix retro with the scrapbook look –  click here for scrapbook ideas for your yearbook.

If you want to take your retro yearbook theme to the extreme, get hold of some 70′s wigs and ask people to put them on for a fun photos page – you could arrange the photos in a strip like an old photo booth. Profile photos could be black and white instead of colour and use old negative film as frames.

Your prom photos page could be a Saturday Night Fever nostalgia theme – use stars and disco balls to set the mood. Remember you can theme your prom tickets to match, using our online designer.

Here are some more retro theme ideas to give you some inspiration:

  • Retro signs – great for font and colour ideas
  • Robots – big pixel characters
  • Retro brands and 70′s/80′s/90′s fashion icons
  • Old school sweets and food packaging
  • Retro auto shows – classic, iconic cars
  • Music formats such as vinyl and cassettes
  • Roller skates, arcade games, telephones, cameras and other leisure items

Go retro-crazy with your yearbook design and enjoy experimenting. We would love to hear your ideas too – tell us on Facebook or leave a reply below.

SPC Yearbooks sample guide 2012

Get your free copy of our Sample Guide 2012 by clicking here!

How you can customise our pre-designed yearbook templates

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How you can customise our pre-designed yearbook templatesSPC Yearbooks’ Pre-designed Template service is an excellent choice for those students and teachers who want a professional looking yearbook without all the design work, and at a very reasonable price. A question that customer services regularly get asked about our Pre-designed Templates option is how much they can ‘individualise’ the design templates; for this reason we’ve decided to write a blog article based around this very question.

What you can do:

  • Choose your favourite design from over 40 professionally designed templates!
  • Choose your own colour scheme! Perhaps you’d like the yearbook template to be in the colours of your school or maybe you’d like a different colour for each form or house.
  •  Choose how many students you’d like per page! Please note that you must choose a number that is an option for that particular template. If you are unsure, please call a customer account manager on 01480 410 435.
  •  Choose from 7 different page types that you can include in your yearbook:
    • 1. Student pages
    • 2. Teacher pages
    • 3. Montage pages
    • 4. Signature pages
    • 5. Awards/Most likely to…
    • 6. Those who have left…
    • 7. Baby Photos/Guess Who pages
  • Pay £1.00 extra per yearbook and have 2 photos per person rather than one!

What you can’t do (but can do if you choose our Complete Design Service):

  • Mix and match yearbook templates
  • Make requests for template designs to be amended
  • Have any number of students per page (each template has a set number of options)
  • Have page types that aren’t included in the 7 options that are given for the Pre-Designed Template Service.

If this doesn’t match your needs, consider our Complete Design service which will give you all the flexibility you need.

If you are thinking about having your yearbook professionally designed and wish to know more about our Pre-Designed Template service or our premium, Complete Design Service, please give SPC’s account managers a ring on 01480 410 435 or email yb@spc-yearbooks.co.uk for friendly advice.

SPC Yearbooks sample guide 2012

Get your free copy of our Sample Guide 2012 by clicking here!

Yearbook Ideas – Word clouds

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yearbook ideas word tag cloudsA yearbook is all about looking back, so how about recording specific things which happened, where around, or in fashion while you were at school? These could include news stories, celebrities who shot to fame, fashion crazes, popular toys and gadgets, etc.

We’ve seen some really great yearbook page designs themed as ‘looking back’ and one of our favourite ideas uses word clouds (also referred to as tag clouds) – popular on websites and blogs, word clouds are quick snapshots using words of different sizes (depending on their frequency or popularity). Word clouds are easy to take in at a glance, visually attractive and fun. You could create different word clouds for different categories i.e. top sports people, favourite food, etc. or your could create on big word cloud with as many words as you can fit to describe your time at school!

Here’s a site which shows simple word clouds in action: http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm place your words into the box and hit ‘randomize’ to see different word cloud shapes. Image Chef http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/ lets you choose from a few different shapes such as a heart, star, skull and cat. Image Chef also allows you to type in initials or numbers for your word cloud, however the saved image is very small (around 5cm at print resolution).

A more feature-rich word cloud generator is Tagxedo http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html go to the site and hit ‘Create’ (you need to install Microsoft Silverlight on your computer to use this). It has lots of shapes, colours and fonts to choose from, and your exported file is good enough to print. The following blog article gives a great low down on the online generators suggested above, and more http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2011/09/8-word-cloud-makers-for-teachers/

Once you’ve generated and exported your word cloud, you could load it into a Yearbook Creator or Yearbook Designer Live! project as an image, or send it to our designers to include in a professionally designed yearbook.

Congratulations to Kelly Webster of Sudbury Upper School on winning £250 off their 2012 yearbooks!

“Excellent! That is such good news to win the prize of £250 off this year 11’s yearbook order. The students at Sudbury Upper School & Arts College will be really pleased. We have used SPC yearbooks in the past with previous year groups, but it’s so good to win this prize this year as an additional incentive to use your professional design service – thank you SPC yearbooks” – Miss K Webster Head of Year 11.

SPC Yearbooks sample guide 2012

Get your free copy of our Sample Guide 2012 by clicking here!

How to add your own backgrounds into Yearbook Creator software

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How to add your own yearbook backgrounds into Yearbook Creator softwareIf you would like to add your own backgrounds into Yearbook Creator, then follow the simple step-by-step guide below. We recommend that backgrounds loaded into Yearbook Creator are 216 x 303mm, are at least 200dpi and saved as a .jpg.

1. Load the Yearbook Creator software and open your project

2. Select the ‘Backgrounds’ tab at the bottom of the window and click the ‘+’ button on the right of the tabs panel

3. Select ‘Add’ from the drop-down menu and navigate to your background file on your computer and click ‘Open’

4. Your background should load into the ‘Backgrounds’ tab (scroll far right in the ‘Backgrounds’ tab to locate it).

5. Drag and drop it onto your new background onto your yearbook page.

Once you have your backgrounds loaded in, you can build your own page styles to make building your yearbook even quicker. If you experience any difficulty loading backgrounds into Yearbook Creator, contact your SPC Yearbooks account manager.

SPC Yearbooks sample guide 2012

Get your free copy of our Sample Guide 2012 by clicking here!

Print Only Service – What are the possibilities?

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Print only service what are the possibilitiesWe think our free Yearbook Creator software is easy to learn and fast to use, but if you find the idea of learning new software daunting, why not use something that you are already familiar with? Here at SPC Yearbooks, as part of our DIY Service, we also offer you the chance to create your yearbook using your own design software. In fact, you may already have done the design and just want to get it printed.

The Print Only Service allows the creative members of the year group to express their talent using a software which you are already comfortable with to ensure that you get your yearbook looking as individual and artistic as you like.

To create a Print Only yearbook, simply design the yearbook in a software you know well – such as Quark XPress, Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Indesign, Microsoft Word etc – and submit to us your print ready files in PDF format once it has been completed. Easy peasy!

The best way to submit your files to SPC would be to use our online file transfer service, or pop them on a USB stick or CD and send it through the post, Recorded Delivery in a padded envelope – this will guarantee that your Customer Account Manager will receive it at this end in once piece.

Just to give you peace of mind, whether you are a design novice or a fully fledged art whiz, once you have chosen to use our yearbook printing service you will be sent all the information you need to make sure that your pages turn out perfectly – such as page margins and guideline dimensions. It is important to use these guidelines throughout the book so that you don’t lose any images or artwork within the binding or around the edge of the book. Please note that we cannot edit or change any of your submitted files once we have received them in PDF format. If you are having problems with your chosen software, please get in touch with your Customer Account Manager straight away so that we can help you to resolve the issue.

All you then need to do is to make sure that you thoroughly check through your files before you submit them and the hard work is over – phew! Sit back, relax and wait for your yearbook proof to arrive. You will then have the chance to proofread and make any amendments you need to make and submit your new amended files in exactly the same way as you did before. Piece of cake!

SPC Yearbooks sample guide 2012

Get your free copy of our Sample Guide 2012 by clicking here!