Advising a yearbook takes skills…a lot of them. While creativity and photography skills matter, being business savvy and managing your time are arguably just as important. It’s a tough job, and that is why we think our advisers are total rockstars. Having the right tools to get through the year is important, so Balfour created the Yearbook Adviser Guide. This beautiful, 96-page workbook gives advisers space to keep track of all the important staff, school and publishing contacts, plus deadlines, budgeting details and upcoming tasks. Elementary customers: This book shipped with your 2018 Production Materials. Didn’t receive it? Contact your representative to order a copy.
Section 1: Planning & Selling
Get started with the roadmap showing the general timeline from building a staff to organizing yearbook delivery day. Once you’re up to speed on all things yearbook with the visual glossary, take a look at our tips for getting started. The Page Planner found in this section is a central location to keep track of what will go on every page of the yearbook. This is an important step to planning and producing the yearbook, and we encourage every adviser to make this step a priority.
Creating a budget is an important step of any business, including the yearbook. Read through our tips on proper pricing, how to marketing the yearbook and where to keep track of it all in our online resource site, StudioBalfour. A friendly budget worksheet is included and can be filled out with your representative.
Marketing the yearbook may seem scary, but we have provided a step-by-step guide and all the tools needed to market like a pro. We’ve even listed 25 fun ways to promote the yearbook!
Section 2: Designing Your Book
When it comes to design, you don’t have to be a pro to have beautiful yearbook. We’ll walk you through all the steps to designing a great cover, choosing the perfect fonts and colors and making it all look cohesive.
Master your portrait pages with step-by-step outline for making decisions that best fit your school. We encourage every school to make it their goal of spelling every name correct, and we have provided tools to make that task easier. The Portrait Proofing Checklist can be copied and given to teachers to help proof their class pages.
The Balfour fonts and colors are available in the guide along with a variety of font themes that show great examples of font and color pairings.
Section 3: Inspiring Designs
When designs catch our eye, we like to show them off. Thirty pages of design ideas direct from schools we work with can be found in this section. We highlight cover designs, portrait layouts, student life, sports, clubs and more.
The layouts on these pages are representative of the creative designs we see at schools from coast to coast. Use them for ideas and inspiration.
Section 4: Calendar
The Adviser Guide ends with a handy monthy-by-month calendar with space for notes. Be sure to check out the monthly goals to stay on track.
