Who’d have guessed that social media sites would be such an inspiration for a printed yearbook theme? The average UK bodkin spends around 3 hours per day on social media, so it’s no wonder we feel at home in our portals of friendom. Our photos and stories sit in neatly stacked timelines, just like a yearbook in fact. Sounds like a great idea for a yearbook theme to me… how about you?
You might be tempted to go and grab a bunch of social media icons, sprawl them across your yearbook pages and call that a social media theme, but wait, we can do much much better than that, and be legally savvy (companies hold copyright protection on their logos and brand assets, so they can’t be used by the likes of you and I).
Here are a few ideas to give your yearbook that social media vibe while avoiding a knock on the door from Mr Zuckerberg’s heavies!
Student and Teacher Profiles
The key to a great social media yearbook theme (apart laying everything out in a grid format) is achieving a mix of visuals with short entries of text. I’ve been known to groan at the 140 character limit on Twitter, which for those interested, is based on the 160 character limit for SMS (plus 20 characters for the username). Every day is a school day!
Get super social-style with profile ques like:
- Username (instead of first and last name)
- Updates, number of followers, following, views – these could be your actual social ‘stats’, or you could make them up!
- What’s on your mind?
- What’s happening?
- Write a comment – these could be by friends, or teachers
- Hashtags of favourite things, memories, top things they’ll be remembered for, for example, #saltedcaramelicecream #fallingoffmychairinenglish #scoringthewinninggoalinnetball
Depending how much space each student can take up, how about…
- Friends grid – allow each student up to
- Wall of photos from trips, events, outside of school, etc.
- Number of views, likes, thumbs up, reactions, top comments and hashtags
Instagram-style photos
Instead of your official school photos, you might want to go for something more informal, like selfies and more creative pics.
Give your photos the Instagram ‘treatment’ by cropping them to square format and play with the saturation and brightness. Add a border and drop in a caption, some hastags and a number of likes.
If you have more time, create your own frame to photograph each student through. Remember to add your school name as the user and the description could be the leavers year and a few hashtags of memories.
Badges and emoticons
Perhaps your yearbook is a brand new social network you’ve made up yourselves. No social site is without a good set of badges – make up your own badges as part of your branding!
It’s not often I see (or post) a status without at least one emoticon. After all, an emoticon is worth a dozen words and facial expressions, as the saying goes 😉
Remember we have lots and lots of ready-made social media-style backgrounds ready to use in Yearbook Hub.
I’ll be back next week with plenty more yearbook ideas!
