Deadlines, Guidelines – all sorts of lines!
It’s nearing the end of second term of the Australian school year and Winter holidays are just around the corner. Mmm! Sipping tea curled up on the couch with a good book! If you’re a school yearbook coordinator or editor, things will probably be pretty calm at the moment but come Term 3 and Term 4 you’ll be overwhelmed by exams, school work and the general flotsam and jetsam of life, meaning your yearbook project will start to slip out of your control…
So what’s the secret to a stress-free yearbook project? Planning! It’s time to get dead serious and talk DEADLINES!
A common complaint we hear is: “People never respect the deadlines I set! Someone is always late with their article and it pushes back the whole project!”
You also may feel mean setting deadlines, having to harass people constantly to finalise their content. But don’t feel bad! You are in charge of the project, and at the end of the day it will be on your head if it does not get done.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret – as an editor, you can set any deadline you want! Assume people are going to be late and be clever about it, manipulating this to your advantage. Set the deadline two weeks before you actually want the content to arrive! That way, you’ll be ahead with getting content from the keen beans, and have those two weeks to bring the stragglers into line by sending out reminder memos and emails!
It’s the same if you have a separate team laying up and designing pages. Ask them to finalise pages two weeks before you wish to start the final editing process.
Let’s assume you want your books in the hot little hands of students by the end of November. Allow two weeks for printing + delivery, and work your deadlines backwards from there. Use a calendar and assign due dates early on in the piece so you can quickly see if the project is running behind schedule.
As a general rule of thumb, you should spend the first half of the year (up until June) planning your yearbook and sourcing potential content and contributors. Make sure everyone who you want to write an article knows that this is expected of them! Ensure photos are taken at major school events like sports carnivals and excursions.
It’s a great idea to set clear Guidelines which people submitting articles and images are to follow, such as:
- Word limit for text; file size for images
- Document type (e.g. .doc or .jpeg
- Clear instructions for naming files (e.g. not PIC10045 but Swimming Carnival 1.jpeg etc)
- Limit number of images – ask for 5 or 10 of the best, not an entire reel which you as editor will have to sort through
- Spell & Grammar check before submission
- Email content as an attachment
Mid-July, start organising your yearbook folders. Have one folder per double-page spread, and store any images and articles relevant to those pages within that folder as they come in by email or USB.
Spend August reminding contributors to send in their content by the due date, and start designing how the yearbook will look so pages are ready to have content dropped in. To ensure all content is received by the end of August, remember to set the deadline two weeks before, in mid-August.
You’ll then have September and the first half of October to lay up and create the first draft of the yearbook. Spend the second half of October editing all pages – it’s a good idea to have a print-out because it’s easier to see mistakes with the physical document in your hands. Split up the task and assign different people 4 pages each to edit – if one person edits an entire document (and yearbooks can be upwards of 60 pages!) there are more likely to be mistakes that go unnoticed.
Aim to have the final document complete by the first week of November, leaving one week for essential changes.
Mid-November is the point in the process where you just have to let go of the project, PDF it up and send it off to print. Breathe a sigh of relief and twiddle your thumbs for the two odd weeks it takes for printing and delivery. There’s nothing like the feeling you get when handing out copies of the yearbook to all the students, on time and stress-free!