The Colophon - Balfour Yearbooks Blog

Educational subject matter experts share their best advice, research, how-to's and insights - all in the name of helping you level-up your knowledge.

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Kel Lemons

Recent Posts

It’s Elementary: Covers

Apr 2, 2019

As part of a series for elementary school advisers, we’ll focus on topics that concern K-5 yearbooks.

Elementary & Middle School
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Five ways to boost last-chance sales

Mar 26, 2019

Whether you’re wrapping up the book for a spring delivery or halfway finished for a fall arrival, it’s likely you’ll want to boost yearbook sales. Here are five ways to drum up excitement for

Marketing
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Big school, small book

Mar 26, 2019
Image by Pexels on Pixabay

From time to time we feature Balfour advisers and schools. In this guest post, Klein Forest High School adviser Sue Blackmon offers advice for big schools with small books.

Marketing , Staff Management
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CSPA honors 12 yearbooks with Crown awards

Mar 23, 2019

The Columbia Scholastic Press Association honored 12 Balfour yearbooks with Crown awards in New York City recently. The Crown Awards recognize the top student publications in news, magazine,

Coverage & Design , New & Noteworthy
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How to fill in the blanks (pages)

Mar 19, 2019

As you’re scrambling to finish pages, it never fails that something goes awry. An annual event gets canceled because of weather. Clubs end up not doing anything. The cool idea in September fails to

Coverage & Design
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Should you ban phones in your classroom?

Mar 12, 2019

Are your staffers a little distracted by text messages, Snapchats and Instagram posts? Yearbook advisers weigh in on banning cell phones in their classrooms

Staff Management
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The long and short of it: hyphens and dashes

Mar 12, 2019

Colons can be confusing. It’s easy to go overboard with commas or parentheses. But dashes—those beautiful, thin lines that suggest a subtle pause or an abrupt change in thought—can be a smart

Writing
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Avoid conflict by establishing a student media policy

Mar 5, 2019

Do you give refunds? How do you handle mistakes? Do you allow song lyrics in senior ads? What about photos of students in bikinis, holding red cups or carrying shotguns? A student media policy will

Staff Management
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‘I can’t. I have Yearbook.’

Feb 26, 2019

Oh, those infamous words staffers throw out when another obligation comes up and they’re in the midst of deadline. “I can’t. I have Yearbook.” What might be an excuse to teachers and friends is a way

Staff Management
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InstaAppeal: promote yearbook by building social media presence

Feb 26, 2019

A strong social media presence—it’s the newest “must have” in the media world, including student media. While yearbook advisers and staffs may be well-versed in the realm of print, going social may

Marketing , Writing , Coverage & Design
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The Essentials: The Index

Feb 19, 2019

As part of our series, “The Essentials,” we’ll discuss the required elements of yearbook. Today, we’ll focus on the index.

It might be the most banal part of the yearbook, but it’s an essential one.

Coverage & Design
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It’s Elementary: Backgrounds

Feb 19, 2019

As part of a series for elementary school advisers, we’ll focus on topics that concern K-5 yearbooks.

Elementary & Middle School
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