Eight Steps to Yearbook Completion

Step 1: Take a Tour of Plic Yearbook

Enjoy a demo video tour of the features your yearbook building tool provides. Investing a little time in an overview will save you hours of self-teaching frustration.

Step 2: Build a Team

Find collaborators to help you work on your yearbook project: teachers, parents, and students can contribute to your project. Add users to Pixami to help with the design process. Reach out to staff and volunteers to ask for photo contributions for special events and daily school life. If you plan on creating special sections, such as superlatives, baby pictures, surveys on popular trends with your students, or run a yearbook cover design contest, find collaborators to help you gather the resources necessary to build these special pages. Enlist a proofreader or two, and make sure that you know who has final sign-off on your book.

Step 3: Yearbook Organization

Plan your page ladder to decide how your pages will be used in your book. Consult past yearbooks and your school calendar to see what events and topics should be covered, then move through your yearbook pages to quickly add in large titles on each page to block out your book’s flow. For ideas of what you can include, consult this handy downloadable section idea checklist. 

Step 4: Photo Collection

Access your Candid Photo manager to create albums corresponding to the activities and events to be covered in your yearbook. Reach out to event organizers or assign a photographer to ensure events are covered, and distribute the Candid photo URL (website address) to anyone who can provide you with the images you’ll need to design your book.

Step 5: Create a Simple Design Plan

Choose a theme and source backgrounds and decorations.

• Choose a theme for your entire book or for individual sections. (Check out the Studio Source Catalog‘s theme collections for inspiration!)
• Create a simple 2-4 color palette, or focus on your school’s colors.
• Preselect a small collection of coordinating backgrounds. Use one style per section or theme the entire book.
• Limit your clipart to a specific style or theme to avoid clutter.
• Select a font styling for your page titles and paragraph text, either on a per section basis or for the entire book.

Step 6: Import Portraits

Import your portraits with their data file. By having information attached to your portraits, you’ll be able to auto-format your portrait pages into alphabetized labelled grids in the editor.

Step 7: Design Your Book

Add images, text and other elements to your page, using premade layouts or dragging & dropping elements onto your page. With a design plan in place and photos available, you’ll find the process of building your pages goes much faster than expected!

Step 8: Review & Approve

Review and approve your complete pages, then submit your book to the Studio Source Dashboard for final proofing. After your book has been approved, your studio will place the order.