Yearbook Page Ideas – Birthdays

Posted on March 21, 2012 by SPC Yearbooks

During your time at school, college or university you may have started a birthday book or noted all of your friend’s birthdays on a calendar – have you thought about making a permanent record of birthdays in your yearbook?

Including birthdays in your yearbook is a great way of remembering them whether you stay in touch with your friends forever or get back in touch in the future. Here are a few ideas on how to include birthdays in your yearbook:

Birthdays page

Use a dedicated yearbook page just for people’s birthdays, ask people to supply their birth date and make sure they are happy with this information being published. You could list the birthdays in a formal, alphabetical order or list birthday girls and guys under the month they were born.

Alternatively you could use horoscopes instead of the months with each horoscope’s description. For example, Scorpio – are very determined, reserved, loyal, and secretive…(source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(astrology)).

One of our 2011 yearbook customers included each month’s birth stone on their birthday pages. You could also note in which Chinese New Year they were born. For example, Year of the Ox, Year of the Tiger, etc. – you can find details of each Chinese New Year animal by clicking here.

Birthday profiles

Another idea is to add each person’s birthday onto their yearbook profile page or student comment. This would work particularly well if you are using a question and answer format for your yearbook profile pages, for example:

Name:
Date of Birth:

If you’re designing your own yearbook, decorate your birthday pages with presents, streamers, balloons, cakes, candles, badges, and anything else birthday-related you can think of!

We would love to see and hear about your yearbook page ideas, post them on our Facebook page or email yb@spc-yearbooks.co.uk.

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

There’s still time to do a 2012 yearbook

Posted on March 7, 2012 by SPC Yearbooks

Are you still thinking about doing a yearbook but haven’t made a start on it yet? You still have time to do so – you can produce a yearbook in very little time with very little hassle!

The biggest part to get out of the way is collecting the content for the yearbook and how you want it structured. We can recommend plenty of online solutions which make it quick and easy to collect content for your yearbook. Take a look at our previous posts on ‘How free photo sharing sites can help your yearbook project…‘ and ‘Online solutions: Making collecting in yearbook content quick and easy‘ for more information and advice.

If you wish to gather opinions quickly online, for awards pages perhaps, try setting up an online poll and inviting others to vote – there are loads of free ones available, but here are a few we’ve found:

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/simple.polls

http://apps.facebook.com/my-polls/

Easy Polls http://easypolls.net/

Polldaddy http://polldaddy.com/

If you are struggling to get hold of everyone’s comments, consider leaving comments out of student pages and just include photos and names instead. You get just as many memories from photos as you would a comment! Plus…. You could always include message/signature pages in your yearbook for people to write on when the books are handed out.

From here you have 2 routes to choose from:

1. Our DIY Service where you can get involved and design it yourself. At this stage of the year it would be ideal for you to get involved and design it yourself using the DIY Service.

If you choose to use our DIY Service, you have the option to use our online editor or desktop software – both are simple to use. Each has a huge variety of page styles and templates to choose from – so save yourself some time and just pick one to run consistently throughout your yearbook – this way there is less design work for you to do so you can concentrate on inserting the content!

2. Let SPC do the design work for you at a little extra cost. If you feel that the DIY Service is not an option or you don’t have enough time on your hands to do the design yourself, there is still time for us to design a yearbook for you. The pressure is off your shoulders. Our Pre-designed Template service allows you to pick from our huge range of designs which are ready to go… pick your colour scheme, send us your content and we do the rest of the work!

Speak to us soon and let us help you plan deadlines for design and agree when you would like your yearbooks to be delivered. Whichever option you choose, SPC Yearbooks will help you create your perfect yearbook! Call 01480 410432 or email yb@spc-yearbooks.co.uk

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

Online solutions: Making collecting in yearbook content quick and easy

Posted on December 7, 2011 by SPC Yearbooks

SPC Yearbooks have launched two online tools which will make the whole process of collecting in content for your yearbook far quicker and easier, leaving you more time to concentrate on other activities!

With one online app to help you collect and edit yearbook student comments and another to help collect and organise pictures and other material, both make it really easy to share the task of editing and preparing your yearbook content.

Whether you are the only editor or one of a yearbook team, it’s easy to track changes. Once all information has been collected in, the SPC Yearbooks team has instant access – no need to send disks or USB drives by post!

The online apps are extremely easy to use and are available to customers using our professional design services or self-designed options (e.g. our Yearbook Creator software, Yearbook Designer Live! online app or your own software).

Collecting individual yearbook comments and photos

SPC Yearbooks can create an online form for you, to make it easy for all students to submit their individual comments and photos.

No logins required! All you have to do is share the link to the form with all the students and let them fill it in and submit. We will give you, the editor, a password so that you can view and edit all the yearbook comments in an online spreadsheet. You can also quickly view any photos that have been uploaded too. It’s also easy to share the spreadsheet with other people if you want a larger editorial team.

Your SPC Yearbooks account manager will automatically be an editor of your spreadsheet and is able to quickly see how you’re getting on and if you’re on track for your copy deadline (the date your content is required in so you can receive your yearbooks when you want to receive them).

What do we need to know?
There are a few questions your account manager will need to ask – these questions could perhaps be decided on in one of your first yearbook committee meetings. Here are the questions:

Do you want people to answer in a comment box or would you prefer they answer a series of questions? (E.g. What is your nickname? What’s your funniest school memory? What do you want to be remembered for?)
If you would like questions, what are these and do want to give individuals the choice of which questions they answer? How many questions does each person need to answer?
How many students would you like to have per page? Download our ‘How To’ guide.
Do you want individuals to upload a photo of themselves?
Do you want us to set up another form for teachers? Perhaps you would prefer to ask them different questions or alternatively, just have a comment box for them.

Once you have answers to these questions, get in touch with your yearbook account manager and ask him/her to set up an online form and editor’s spreadsheet – simple!

Collecting in yearbook content for ‘other pages’ or content generally

SPC Yearbooks have an online workspace where you and selected others can drop yearbook content into various folders. The advantage of having an online workspace is that it’s multi-user, multi-location and again, takes away the hassle of sending content to SPC Yearbooks. If you decide to use the online form and editor’s spreadsheet, you may also want to use our online workspace for montage photos and content for ‘other pages’. If you’re not using an online form as well, there’ll be additional folders set up for you in your online workspace where you can insert staff and student comments/photos. Just ask an SPC Yearbooks account manager to share a relevant master folder with you and you can get going collecting in your content right away.

If you wish to learn more about our online solutions to collecting in content, please get in touch via email: yb@spc-yearbooks.co.uk or by phone, 01480 410 435.

You can still do a yearbook in 2011!

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Phil

Still haven’t sorted a yearbook yet? You still have time to do so – you can produce a yearbook in very little time with very little hassle!

The biggest part to get out of the way first is the content for the yearbook and how you want it structured. Make sure that you have all the photos and comments that will be going into the yearbook ready – at this time of the year you may want to leave out student comments to make the process a lot quicker… this way you won’t need to rigorously proof read the comments for anything that shouldn’t be there. You get just as many memories from photos as you would a comment! Plus…. You always have social networking sites to fall back on if you wish to contact your fellow students.

From here you have 2 routes to choose from:

1. Our DIY Service where you can get involved and design it yourself. At this stage of the year it would be ideal for you to get involved and design it yourself using the DIY Service. You will probably find you have more time on your hands after the exam period.

2. Let SPC do the design work for you at a little extra cost. If you feel that the DIY Service is not an option or you don’t have enough time on your hands to do the design yourself, there is still time for us to design a yearbook for you. It takes a little longer but the pressure is off your shoulders and moves over to ours… Don’t worry – it’s what we’re used to! Our silver service is the recommended choice at this time of year – you pick from our huge range of pre-designed templates… pick your colour scheme and we do the rest of the work!

Comments v’s questions for yearbook profile pages

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Bill

Student profile pages (which usually consist of each student’s photo and a comment, arranged into tutor groups/classes), make up the bulk of most yearbooks. If you are pressed for time – or have a very large year group – then you could choose to have the student photos with names above or beneath only and no individual comments. You can then get a whole form group onto one double page spread – saving cost as the yearbook will have less pages. It will also take less time to put together as you don’t need to collect in the individual comments. However, it does make the yearbook more personal if there is a comment written by each student to appear next to their photo and it’s the perfect place to record people’s aspirations for the future – there are several ways of presenting and collecting profile page comments.

The classic way is to give everyone a set number of words to write about themselves and their final message. The decision on the word count that you allow will depend on:

1. Your yearbook design
2. The font that you choose
3. The amount of space that you allocate each student on the page

As a rough guide, this is what SPC Yearbooks find works well:

2 students per page… 200 words per student
3 students per page … 150 words per student
4 students per page… 100 words per student
5 students per page… 90 words per student
6 students per page… 80 words per student
7 students per page … 70 words per student
8 students per page… 60 words per student
9 students per page… 50 words per student

Whilst the classic ‘set word count’ comment will suit most, some people will struggle to come up with a comment. You could find that you get some very short comments and that some people will struggle to think of what to write. An alternative and very effective way of collecting yearbook comments in is to come up with a list of questions that everyone answers – such as their nickname, what they will most likely be remembered for, ‘myself in three words’, funniest memory, etc. How many questions you ask will again depend on how many students you have per page, the font you use and the design that you have chosen.

Here are some other questions that you might like to include…

What is your nickname?
What’s your favourite school memory?
What’s your worst school memory?
Where you’ll be in ten years’ time
What would you like to have achieved in ten years’ time?
My biggest mistake was…
Confessions
One word that sums you up
How would you like to be remembered?
Yourself in three words
Most embarrassing moment
Favourite song

A variation is to get people to write a comment about a friend to appear in the yearbook next to their photo. Whilst this can be quite effective, it does take a lot of coordination and you will have to ensure that everyone has something written about them – and carefully check what has been written to make sure that it is appropriate!

If you are not sure how many words you need to allocate or have questions about which format would be best suited to you, just call SPC Yearbooks on 01480 410432 or email one of our yearbook advisors who will be happy to help you find the best solution for your yearbook.

Get your free copy of SPC Yearbooks’ Sample Guide by clicking here!

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31