How to finish your yearbook during a national pandemic
As the COVID-19 virus situation remains ever-changing, the health and well being of you, your students and your communities is top-of-mind for us at Lifetouch. We know, among the many concerns you have right now, you remain dedicated to helping your school or community capture the memories of this year – which causes many questions about how you will finish your yearbook, when it will ship and how you will distribute it to your students. Our teams are reviewing our yearbook processes to determine the best ways to support Advisers in finishing their yearbooks and delivering them to students. We are committed to providing you with yearbook development and delivery information and will provide you with updates on these topics here as they become available.
Yearbook clubs all across the country are experiencing a similar feeling — uncertainty and stress as spring yearbook deadlines approach. You made a commitment to advise the yearbook program at your school, and we made a commitment to help you create a yearbook your community is proud of. We remain committed to The Pact we made with you and we are here to support you on this ever-changing journey.
So let’s get started on Plan B. Below are new and relevant resources that will get you and your yearbook to the finish line this spring.
Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR Camera & Lenses Giveaway- Coming soon!
We want to make things more exciting and invite you to enter our Spring 2020 Adviser Sweepstakes and enter to win a Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR Camera and Custom Lenses Kit. The giveaway is for Yearbook Advisers and will go live at the end of March.
Digital resources available for you
• The best yearbooks showcase story-telling images. Lifetouch is more than just your yearbook publisher. We provide a helpful curriculum empowering you to design a great yearbook. View Digital Curriculum.
• Filler Page Ideas – Need ideas to fill the rest of your yearbook pages? Download our filler page ideas PDF today for free!
• COVID-19 copyright-free JPG images that can be used in publications – Public Health Image Library.
• Struggling to fill pages where spring sports and events have been canceled? Cover how your school is coping with COVID-19 and view our COVID-19 page spread examples.
• Headlines are a great way to inspire a page spread. View our list of COVID-19 related headline ideas to spark ideas for your Spring 2020 page content.
• Here are a few articles we found interesting on the topic of COVID-19 and journalism; Teen Vogue Article & the Student Press Law Center Article.
E-Learning Opportunities
Join us for our new e-learning series to provide you and your schools with exclusive content that we planned to share at Journalism Education Association (JEA) and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) conventions which were canceled. Join us as we kick off our e-learning series for Spring 2020 for ideas to complete your yearbook, how to engage with your community and more. All sessions are available for students, advisers, and educators.
Upcoming Webinars:
APRIL 3rd, 2020 | 10:00 AM CST | The Creative Commons: Using images from the web → Sign-up Today!
How to tell the story when you can’t be there to capture it.
APRIL 8th, 2020 | 10:00 AM CST | Adding deeper coverage through design → Sign-up Today!
We all want to include each student at least three times in the yearbook in photos, but how do we do that? It’s all about planning. Learn how to plan the content of your design to add depth to your coverage.
APRIL 15th, 2020 | 10:00 AM CST | Just the right type → Sign-up Today!
Typography can make or break your yearbook. Learn the “rules” of typography, why they’re important to our readers and, sometimes, how to break those rules for a reason.
MAY 6th, 2020 | 10:00 AM CST | Designing publications → Sign-up Today!
Whether you design newspapers, magazines or yearbooks, using design principles will help you create outstanding looks for your publications.
Past Webinar Recordings:
MARCH 27, 2020 | Changing Times → View Recording
These times they are changing… And they are changing fast. At Lifetouch, we have gathered some of our best of the best in Yearbooks and would love to engage with you on how to navigate this journey. Join us on our first-ever panel to hear ideas for filling your remaining yearbook pages, how to create a community from a distance and more.
MARCH 31, 2020 | Covering the viral situation → View Recording
Never before have our students had the opportunity to localize a world-wide crisis in their yearbook. How did COVID-19 affect our schools, our students and their families? How did it affect our seniors who will never experience their prom, their graduation and their final game played on their own court? See several ideas in this webcast.
APRIL 1st, 2020 | Yearbook ideas from the professional’s → View Recording
Ideas are everywhere. From shopping malls to magazines to the internet, we can inspiration for yearbook spreads, modules and coverage topics if we “think yearbook” all the time.
Social media just became your best friend
Luckily we live in a digital age. You can use social media to promote, sell and design your yearbook.
Facebook posts ideas:
- Share an article that inspired you.
- Create a social media post series to promote your yearbook and link to your school’s YBPay Website. Make sure to add an order due by date!
- Ask community members to give you quotes from the student’s perspective on COVID-19. P.S. This will make for excellent content in your yearbook.
- Send out a request for community members to send you photos of students learning from home during COVID-19 and use our COVID-19 page spread templates (available above) to create unique page spreads.
Email Communication you can send
- Let your community members know that your yearbook sale is still live via email. Send an email to invite them to purchase a yearbook on YBPay.com. Give them a preview of the COVID-19 page spreads you have created!
- Use this time to run your student frequency report on your Yearbook Creation Tool. That way you can send an email blast to parents letting them know their student is featured in the yearbook.
