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Yearbook Themes

Tulika Nair
Are you having difficulty choosing yearbook themes for your yearbook? Here, we give you tips to help you choose themes for your school yearbook and give you some ideas for the same.
One of the everlasting memories from school that allows you to revisit your childhood are yearbooks. From elementary school to high school, these yearbooks allow you to look up friends and classmates. These are records of the highlights and events to remember in that particular academic year.
Extremely popular in America, Australia, and Canada, almost all schools publish yearbooks to commemorate the year gone by. While designing a yearbook, one of the most important decisions to be made is deciding on the yearbook theme.
Brainstorming on yearbook ideas generally gives you many themes that you can choose from for a yearbook. But how do you decide what is perfect for your school? Here are some tips to decide on a theme for a yearbook and different ideas for themes for yearbooks that you can take inspiration from.

Choosing Yearbook Ideas and Themes

What are the things to keep in mind while choosing a theme for a yearbook? Here are some tips that will help you pick out themes for your yearbook with relative ease.

Well one of the most important pointers is that the yearbook needs to definitely reflect your school. It needs to highlight the one thing that makes your school different and unique.
The next thing that can help you decide on school yearbook ideas is how that particular year has been different for your school. What are the different achievements that can be highlighted? Are there any awards the school has won? Answering these questions can bring you one step closer to deciding on the perfect theme for your school yearbook.
While most yearbooks focus on the school and its activities, it may be a good idea to focus on how the outside environment has affected the school and the students.
If fun themes are what you are looking for your yearbook, then twisting and playing around with visual representations and typography can be an interesting choice. Even if the theme is not quirky, it should allow you to go wild with creative interpretations.
The theme should not overshadow but it should be the link that flows through the yearbook. Innovative yearbook layout ideas are the best way to support the theme so that it does not seem like the theme exists only for the sake of having one.
Color and typography (the choice of font) are some of the best ways to highlight your theme. While playing with colors may make the yearbook more attractive, creating a hotchpotch of fonts is a complete no-no. Use fonts that are easy to read and decipher.
These tips should hopefully allow you to come up with some great ideas for themes for a yearbook. Here are some ideas for themes appropriate for different school years.

FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

In elementary school students are still quite young and need ample guidance to design and create a yearbook. There are many yearbook ideas for elementary school that can be of help in case you and your class are assigned to design the yearbook for your school.
There is no limit to the variety of themes that can be used to create yearbooks for kids in elementary school. Here are some great ideas that you can use.
  • 10 Reasons Why...
  • A Celebration of...
  • A Comet's Journey
  • At One with the Wild
  • Faces of the Future
  • Greatest School on Earth
  • Just Look at Us
  • Leaving our Mark
  • Live the Adventure
  • Many Voices, One Story
  • My Superpower is...
  • New Horizons
  • Photo Finish
  • Play The Game
  • Revisit the Old
  • Round the World in 80 Days
  • The Colors of the Spectrum
  • The Seven Wonders
  • Where Everybody Knows Your Name
  • Write Down Your Life
Once you have decided on the theme, you will need to look at other aspects like the cover page and the layout. For yearbook cover design ideas, it may be a great idea to have a painting contest and choose one of the best paintings as the cover.
Alternatively, you can have all the kids imprint their hands on a large sheet of chart paper, take a photograph and use a smaller image of this as the cover. If you have managed to decide on a couple of themes for the yearbook, get the students to come up with ideas that can be used for the cover.
Yearbooks for elementary school should be more about images than text. Make it as colorful as possible with lots of photographs of activities that have taken place over the year. Cartoons and funny graphics combined with photographs can be also an interesting addition to the yearbook.
You can get the kids to give you funny quotes that can be scattered through the yearbook. They can also be encouraged to draw cartoons that can be used in the yearbook. Another interesting aspect that could help enhance and add to the theme of the yearbook is to get the students to express what their favorite thing about the year that has gone by was.

FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL

Planning yearbooks will be something that will probably be met with a huge approval and lots of enthusiasm when you are talking about middle school students. Here the students will only need a little guidance and deciding on themes for the yearbook will be a challenge that they will take up head on.
Interesting themes for middle school could include something that ties in with an important event for the school. For example, if it is your school's 75th year anniversary, then the theme of the yearbook could revolve around that.
If your school has some colors that are symbolic with it then, your school's colors could be one of the most interesting themes that you could use for the yearbook. This will tie in all the students together and ensure that there is a spirit of camaraderie amongst the students.
The same could be true for a yearbook theme that has the school mascot as the central idea. An unusual yearbook idea for middle school is designing the yearbook around a catchphrase or a slogan. This could be one of the more difficult themes for a yearbook but it is an interesting one that would be hugely appreciated.
Here are some interesting themes that could be used for the yearbook that you are working on.
  • 100 Reasons to Celebrate
  • A Certain Point of View
  • A Class Worth Waiting for
  • A Look at our World
  • Admiration and Inspiration
  • Breaking Out of the Box
  • Capture the Magic
  • Catch the Moments
  • Extreme Makeover
  • Flying First Class
  • Intersections
  • It's the Small Things That Count
  • Lights! Camera! Action!
  • Memories in Motion
  • New Directions
  • Now Playing...
  • Traveling in Time
  • Us Yearly
With these interesting themes in place, there is a lot that you can do with the cover and layout. Kids in middle school are more proficient with technology and may have some brilliant and innovative ideas for cover design and layout.
Ensure that your cover and layout is representative of your theme. The slogans and catchphrases used can be reminiscent of incidents that have occurred in the year but at the same time it may be great to be able to tie it in with the theme.

FOR HIGH SCHOOL

High school yearbooks are very dear to everyone as at least for the students graduating these yearbooks are their connection to the past and the only means of keeping high school memories alive.
Themes for high school should revolve around the excitement and enthusiasm. Themes could range from how the outside world has affected your world to the events at the school and the achievements of the school. If the graduating class has some sort of class slogan, then that could be used as a yearbook theme as well.
  • A Blast From the Past
  • A Certain Kind of Cool
  • An Extraordinary Ordinary
  • C'est la vie
  • Carpe Diem
  • Climbing New Heights
  • Color Outside the Lines
  • Don't Stop Believing
  • From Blueprints to Footprints
  • Into the Wild
  • Kaleidoscope
  • New Traditions
  • News Flash
  • Tabloid Fever
  • This is the Year...
  • Who Would You Be If...
  • Years of Tradition
  • The Adventures of (School's Name) High
Collect baby photographs of the students who are graduating and introduce them to the school with a few lines about every student. This will be a departure from the regular photo feature about the graduating class. Ensure that there are photographs of all the different teams and clubs. Prom photographs are another must in the yearbook.
The yearbook for high school is always the most treasured of the lot and it is important that you create something that is truly memorable. Take tips and ideas from the class that is graduating.
Ask them what they would like to see in the yearbook that will be most treasured by them. Dedicate a section to their achievements. The yearbook for a high school should show a marked departure from childhood and showcase the first step towards adulthood.
These are just some tips on how you can decide on themes for a yearbook. At the end of the day the yearbook should be reflective of the school you are a part of and the students who study there.