When it comes to producing a middle school yearbook, you will find that instructors still have a heavy hand in the finished product. The middle school years require constant supervision in order to produce results. Every detail, down to the yearbook layout itself, must be approved before moving on if things are to be finished on schedule.
As one of the first matters of design, the yearbook layout should be chosen early. This layout decision will reflect not only the overall appearance and order of the book, but also the appearances of individual pages themselves.
Permitting each page to be individually designed by students at the middle school level will likely result in an overuse of tacky clip art images and photos only certain people based on their friendship statuses.
Middle school yearbook projects often find better success when a selection of five to seven page layouts are chosen before the school year begins. Providing students with yearbook layout guidelines and templates from which to choose will dramatically lessen the chances of an immature yearbook student going bananas and deciding that this year's book should be nothing but a collection of collages.
When selecting these yearbook layout templates, you should look for pages that fit well together. You should specify on each page where the heading is to be placed, and provide boxes for wording to be placed in. In order to encourage students to remember the importance of descriptions in the middle school yearbook, you might consider requiring that a certain percentage of these designated word areas be filled with words at the time of publication.
You should go a step further in your yearbook layout templates by specifying what the words in these designated areas should look like. You can save a lot of headaches during the school year by specifying that all wording be in black ink, and in a specific font style and size. With font, size, and color options taken away from them, your young yearbook layout class will not be tempted to splatter the page with rainbow colored explanations featuring seven different fonts in the same sentence.
Your yearbook layout templates should likewise feature specified areas that must be filled with pictures. By dictating the size, shape, and locations of the photo boxes up front, you can prevent your middle school yearbook team from crowding pictures of only their friends in places where they have no business being. Ultimately, the explanation of these templates will take only a single class period, and will have your yearbook squad on their way to producing quality work promptly in the school year.
Make certain your yearbook layout instructor insists that all pages be approved before being made a permanent part of the publication, and that a lecture is given on the importance of including everyone in the yearbook, not just the student's friends. With these boundaries in place, your middle school yearbook team will have an easier time staying within acceptable creative boundaries.
