Lesson 3: How to Build a Solid Yearbook Team

Lesson 3 – The Yearbook Team

It takes a team!

• The process of creating and distributing a yearbook is challenging and cannot be done alone.
• Typically, schools will form a yearbook team composed of students and led by a teacher known as the yearbook advisor.

The duties of a yearbook advisor include:

• Teaching photography and photo editing and layouts.
• Assigning students to different tasks, such as taking photos of school events
• The advisor will meet with students once a week, at least, to discuss progress and ideas.

The team:

• A yearbook team can vary in size and is typically divided into subcommittees based on the student’s areas of interest (design, writing etc).
• The team members meet at least once a week in small groups to discuss ideas and tasks to be completed.
• Duties include; taking photos, editing images, writing captions and content
• The most successful yearbook teams are comprised of highly motivated and organized students who are passionate about their school community and have a broad range of interests.
• Ideally, you want to find students who:
  • Work Hard.
  • Are passionate about the school &/or writing &/or photography.
  • Work well in groups.
  • Bring relevant skills to the team such as writing, photography, graphic design or all of the above.
  • The team should represent a diverse range of backgrounds and interests to best represent the school experience for all the students.

Team members

Once you have your yearbook team assembled, it’s time to divide and conquer by assigning the team members with different titles and duties.

Team members include:

• Editor-in-Chief
  • responsible for making sure deadlines are met.
  • ensures that everyone is included in the yearbook.
  • advertises the publication of the yearbook to ensure sales.
  • An organized individual who is a natural leader.

• Assignment Editor
  • Assigns each member a specific task with a deadline (such as conducting an interview or photoshoot).
  • Holds team members accountable for their assignments.

• Designer
  • Creates layouts, pages, graphics etc. based on direction from the editor.
  • Has experience with graphic design and layouts.

• Editor in Chief
  • Responsible for the overall quality of the yearbook.
  • Ensures that the content is well-organized, inclusive and interesting.
  • Provides feedback on each written piece.
  • Ultimately decides what is included in the final publication.
  • Determines where text should appear in relation to imagery.
  • Oversees all phases of production from start to finish and ensures that deadlines are met and any unexpected problems are dealt with.

• Managing Editor
  • Responsible for the overall production and quality of the yearbook.
  • Checks work for errors as well as making sure that the yearbook is free of typos and grammatical errors.
  • Communicates with other editors to organize content and ensure that deadlines are met.

• Section Editors
  • Responsible for editing and publishing articles.
  • Assigns articles to writers and photographers and works with them to further develop story ideas.
  • Section editors can either be responsible for all aspects of publishing (editing, assigning writing and photography tasks) or, there may be more than one editor, each specializing in one aspect.

• Portrait Section Editor
  • Responsible for creating and maintaining a schedule for portrait sessions by:
    • Communicating and scheduling with parents, students and teachers.
    • Communicating and scheduling with photographers.
    • Provides guidance and feedback to photographers.
    • Maintains a standard of quality for portraits, captions and headlines.

• Photography Editor
  • The photography editor is responsible for the following:
• Coordinating the photography team, assigning photographers to specific events, and editing photos.
• Publishing photos on the site.
• Distributing photos to other members of the book team via Dropbox or another file-sharing service.
• Selecting which photographs will be used in each chapter of your book (and deciding how many pages should contain images).
• Works with writers to select appropriate photos.
• Manages a photo database so the team can quickly access photos as needed.
• Photographers
  • Know about cameras and photography.
  • Independent workers in need of little supervision.
  • Responsible for capturing the essence of the student body via:
    • Candid photos
    • Portraits
    • Class photos
    • Photos of school events and daily student life

• Business Manager
  • Responsible for managing the budget and that all costs are accounted for.
  • Oversees the purchase of supplies and manages the ordering of inventory.
  • Analyzes any financial information that comes out of meetings with advertisers to determine what kinds of ads are most effective for driving revenue.

• General Staff
  • Responsible for day-to-day operations.
  • Copyedit, provide photo and video support, write captions and headlines, and create content in multiple formats.