• Your theme communicates,

unifies and personalizes the

story of the year.

• Cover, endsheets, title page,

opening, section dividers,

closing and parting page

contribute substantially to

telling the theme story.

• Both the verbal and visual

approach to theme concept

and content should make

sense to readers and appeal

to their sense of belonging.

• Design trademarks

distinguish the theme from

all other content in the book.

INSPiRATiON | H A N D O U T

THEME SCHEME DIVIDE AND CONQUER—Assign staff members to teams of three or four and have each team develop a theme concept, create a theme portfolio and present the idea development to the staff. Discuss specifics of theme so everyone has the same expectations for what the staff is hoping to achieve with next year’s concept.

PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAP—Brainstorm the direction of your theme based on 10 specifics that reflect your school as one-of-a-kind in each of the coverage areas (lifestyles, academics, clubs, sports and people). Focus on traditions and new aspects of the approaching school year as well as the demographics of your audience. Choose 5-10 key words that can be associated with the specifics; research verbal/visual possibilities with idioms/ rhyming/thesaurus dictionaries and magazines/websites.

SCHEME YOUR THEME—Explore the wealth of verbal/visual options to capture the story of the year and its personality based on your brainstormed content and the desired tone/mood you want for your yearbook. Choose an approach which best suits your idea. Examine the ways in which you can effectively communicate the theme idea in sections/subsections, as well as specific content of individual spreads. Also consider the use of theme trademarks to develop the personality of readers’ services. Isolate content and graphic “cool tools” that you can use as your verbal/visual trademarks while creating the yearbook’s distinctive look.

Portfolios include: • Theme worksheet explaining reasoning for theme idea development. • Mock-up of cover and endsheet design. • Mocked-up title and closing pages and opening/closing spread with headlines, sample copy, photo ideas and captions. • Mocked-up divider spread with representative headlines, copy and captions. • Other theme-related ideas as selected by the team.

SCHOOL | CORONADO MIDDLE SCHOOL PUBLICATION | THE SURFER LOCATION | CORONADO, CA

cover endsheets opening page layout