We've all made those mistakes before. You know - the ones when you smack yourself in the head with a resounding "duh". Things like putting the cereal in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. Forgetting to grab your lunch for work in the morning, therefore requiring you eat out...again. Locking your keys in the car. (I adamantly deny doing any of these...in the past month.)
There's a lot that can go wrong with making a yearbook. Some of those are "duhs", while some of them aren't as logical. We all make mistakes, and though I know you want to believe both you and your yearbook are perfect, most likely it won't be perfect at all. Learn from others' mistakes (namely, mine) and take them to heart. Your yearbook will still probably not be perfect, but please, save yourself from the hair-loss and heart palpitations and relieve yourself the stress you could've avoided.
Here are the top 11 mistakes you can avoid:
Content:
1) Misspelling your school's name and book title. Or not having it included at all. And yes, even the professionals get it wrong sometimes, including several newspapers that have misspelled their own names. The New Hampshire’s Valley News even misspelled its own name on the front cover. Don't let that be you. If you're building a yearbook, also remember that book is a timepiece. Remember to include the address and contact information for the school.
When I was a senior on our high school dance team, each member received a DVD of all the performances and team interviews. We summoned a fantastic local film producer to do so. He even made our opening credits with each of our team members like The OC theme. (Yes, I realize this dates me.) 9 out of the 14 of us had our names misspelled. I will forever be immortalized on that DVD as Hana Davis. I was fortunate, as you can still pronounce my name correctly with that spelling.
4) Accidental content not scheduled to be included. Sometimes adding correct content gets missed. If you fill it with place-holder text (also known as Lorim Dipsum) it's easy to pass by. If you fill it with actual sentences that mean something, it's still easy to forget.
During my first year on editorial staff on my college newspaper, we'd fill in the headlines and captions with incredulous statements. Some of them were hilarious, but inappropriate, and we would certainly not want them to print. Some of them were hilarious, and perhaps even uplifting, but again, not intended to print. Unfortunately, the latter happened one time. The particular caption read, "Ron Ginn is pretty much the nicest guy I've ever met. A picture of him and the class will go here." Ron Ginn actually sent an email to the editor of that section thanking him for the kind compliments, though he was sure that wasn't what was intended to print. It wasn't. But it could have been much much worse.
5) Including the usage of modern day shorthand writing for texts and tweets. With only 140 characters to use, sometimes you just have to use "U R" vs "you are." But keep it out of print. Find another way to word the sentence if you're already full. Or if you're trying to be cute, try to put this in perspective of 50 years from now, where texting shorthand has probably changed drastically and unlikely to make sense. I used to write personal blogs with shorthand trying to be cute. "We had a gr8 time in NYC! It was a blast! I got 2 C the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. It was sOoOoOo PrEtTy!"
Honestly. How much of that was fun to read? Exactly. (I still make myself throw up a little every time I read that.)
6) Not looking at every page of the PDF to make sure it exported correctly. I know, I know, computers are smart. Right. Look where that's gotten Windows Word. Every page in the PDF has different elements on it. For the most part, it will flatten the layers correctly. But every once in a while, those little dashes or graphic elements you added to embellish the corners just didn't get there right.
Yearbooks are called yearbooks for a reason. It's a compilation of everything from the year.
Most likely your printer is going to give you a schedule of deadlines and due dates for certain things. Take a look at it and plan accordingly. That also means planning your entire book in advance. You don't have to have all the content. But knowing what pages will be what and getting a general layout done for each of them is sure-fire way to be done ahead of schedule.
If you're late on your deadline, that means that you will have to be fit in for when the printer's schedule allows, which, during yearbook season, is far from easy to find.
9) "I can do it alone." This is by far the biggest lie you could ever believe - if I dare say, even in life in general. "But I work better by myself. Trying to keep track of everyone else is too much work" you say? Then I dare say you're micromanaging. Being a good leader in life is about knowing what tasks you can give to others to accomplish and helping them reach your collective goals. Divy out the things you know are not your natural gifts. If you are better at design and not the sales and financial aspects, then find someone else to do the sales and financial aspects. If you don't know the first thing about photography or design, then enlist someone who would know, even if they're not experts either. Know your strengths and weaknesses, then divy out your weaknesses to those who can help you along.
10) Attempting to finish your project at midnight. (See #8 for how to best prevent this.) Your brain function is simply not functional at that time, no matter how late of a night-owl you really are, or how important it is to get out THAT night. If it's due the next morning, get some sleep, wake up and grab a cup of coffee and restart then. However, again, applying #8 to your life will drastically reduce your stress level and allow for many more rested nights of sleep and fewer gallons of coffee. You'll thank me later. (Take it from someone who learned too late in college that editing my final drafts at that time was not a proper decision for the grades I sought.)
11) Not utilizing social media. In my days of yearbook in high school, social media didn't exist. With a high school of topping 1,000 students and a staff of roughly 10, you can imagine our struggles to get names and captions for photos. Now, you may be in a homeschool group. You may very well know everyone in your school. But what I bet you didn't know is that involving the whole community through social media will stir excitement about the finished product, therefore increasing sales, as well! Use facebook groups to update the whole community about what days school pictures are, or if you're in need of photos from that field trip you want to include but have absolutely no photos of. The best part of setting up facebook groups is that you can share files, whether it be high-resolution photos or low-resoution PDF's to preview a few pages of the book.
2) Misspelling Students and Staff's names. If you trust yourself to get everyone's name right, you will misspell every person's name but your own child. Guaranteed. If you trust yourself to check it a few times by yourself, you will misspell several people's names. Guaranteed. If you have multiple people double check the same list, you might get them all correct. But you still might misspell one or two people's names.
That's how it goes.
That's how it goes.
When I was a senior on our high school dance team, each member received a DVD of all the performances and team interviews. We summoned a fantastic local film producer to do so. He even made our opening credits with each of our team members like The OC theme. (Yes, I realize this dates me.) 9 out of the 14 of us had our names misspelled. I will forever be immortalized on that DVD as Hana Davis. I was fortunate, as you can still pronounce my name correctly with that spelling.
3) Illogical or silly grammatical mistakes. You may be known as the grammar nazi in your circle of friends. You may even be an actual English teacher, giving lectures on the proper sentence structure and the proper use of the English language. Heaven forbid there's a preposition you end a sentence with. (See what I did there?) But even the demi-gods are fallible. You are not impervious to the travesty of silly grammatical mistakes. Automatically assume that you have either misspelled something or used incorrect grammar and you are far more likely to catch these mistakes before printing.
During my first year on editorial staff on my college newspaper, we'd fill in the headlines and captions with incredulous statements. Some of them were hilarious, but inappropriate, and we would certainly not want them to print. Some of them were hilarious, and perhaps even uplifting, but again, not intended to print. Unfortunately, the latter happened one time. The particular caption read, "Ron Ginn is pretty much the nicest guy I've ever met. A picture of him and the class will go here." Ron Ginn actually sent an email to the editor of that section thanking him for the kind compliments, though he was sure that wasn't what was intended to print. It wasn't. But it could have been much much worse.
5) Including the usage of modern day shorthand writing for texts and tweets. With only 140 characters to use, sometimes you just have to use "U R" vs "you are." But keep it out of print. Find another way to word the sentence if you're already full. Or if you're trying to be cute, try to put this in perspective of 50 years from now, where texting shorthand has probably changed drastically and unlikely to make sense. I used to write personal blogs with shorthand trying to be cute. "We had a gr8 time in NYC! It was a blast! I got 2 C the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. It was sOoOoOo PrEtTy!"
Honestly. How much of that was fun to read? Exactly. (I still make myself throw up a little every time I read that.)
6) Not looking at every page of the PDF to make sure it exported correctly. I know, I know, computers are smart. Right. Look where that's gotten Windows Word. Every page in the PDF has different elements on it. For the most part, it will flatten the layers correctly. But every once in a while, those little dashes or graphic elements you added to embellish the corners just didn't get there right.
Set-up and Layout:
7) Not talking to your printer before you begin working on your book about content settings. There are terms you probably are unaware of that you need to be and specifications of your book that, if unknown, can create nightmare-inducing scenarios. Here's a short list of things you need to be aware of:- Page count, the variance you're allowed and any price changes that may occur
- End sheets
- Two-page spreads
- Bleed vs. No Bleed
- Paper types
- Cover types
- Color vs. Black & White, and what that means for pricing and content setup.
- Acceptable files and proper setup
- What software programs are allowed and recommended for your situation
- Schedule of deadlines and turnaround time
Organization:
8) Not giving yourself enough time. We've all been there. The all-too-many all-nighters I pulled in college because I didn't prepare myself enough ahead of time and schedule my homework still haunt my dreams.Yearbooks are called yearbooks for a reason. It's a compilation of everything from the year.
Most likely your printer is going to give you a schedule of deadlines and due dates for certain things. Take a look at it and plan accordingly. That also means planning your entire book in advance. You don't have to have all the content. But knowing what pages will be what and getting a general layout done for each of them is sure-fire way to be done ahead of schedule.
If you're late on your deadline, that means that you will have to be fit in for when the printer's schedule allows, which, during yearbook season, is far from easy to find.
10) Attempting to finish your project at midnight. (See #8 for how to best prevent this.) Your brain function is simply not functional at that time, no matter how late of a night-owl you really are, or how important it is to get out THAT night. If it's due the next morning, get some sleep, wake up and grab a cup of coffee and restart then. However, again, applying #8 to your life will drastically reduce your stress level and allow for many more rested nights of sleep and fewer gallons of coffee. You'll thank me later. (Take it from someone who learned too late in college that editing my final drafts at that time was not a proper decision for the grades I sought.)
11) Not utilizing social media. In my days of yearbook in high school, social media didn't exist. With a high school of topping 1,000 students and a staff of roughly 10, you can imagine our struggles to get names and captions for photos. Now, you may be in a homeschool group. You may very well know everyone in your school. But what I bet you didn't know is that involving the whole community through social media will stir excitement about the finished product, therefore increasing sales, as well! Use facebook groups to update the whole community about what days school pictures are, or if you're in need of photos from that field trip you want to include but have absolutely no photos of. The best part of setting up facebook groups is that you can share files, whether it be high-resolution photos or low-resoution PDF's to preview a few pages of the book.
