Yearbook - your year in photos

At the end of every year there are a few ‘the best song’ competitions. The songs we listened to in summer, or even those from winter, seem then to be... obsolete. They merge together with the older songs we liked in all the previous years. When we accidentally hear a song from our youth, we tend to relive the emotions connected to them (and turn the volume up:) The same happens to our memories. How the last year’s birthday cake looked like, a present on your son’s birthday, the holiday view seen from the hotel room… Do you remember it all? Will you still remember in three, five or ten years?

What is a Yearbook?

Yearbook has become really popular in the USA although in a slightly different form. In the American culture a Yearbook is a Photo Book that you prepare at the end of the school year. There are photos of all the students, teachers and pictures from various school celebrations – trips, school plays, games, etc. The same Book (or a different product – e.g. a Calendar) can be prepared to sum up your year (not necessarily the school one ;)

Every year is full of beautiful moments that you do not want to forget. This is why you took some photos! On all the family gatherings and while celebrating anniversaries with your partner. Even during a simple summer barbecue with friends or frying pancakes. Yearbook is also a good way to organise the photos taken during a special photo shoot, e.g. weddings or Christmas.

Yearbook should reflect your whole year – full of ordinary days without make-up and spontaneous decision or more official and important meetings. The biggest advantage of the Yearbook is its neutral tone. In a couple of years it should evoke the same emotions as those you feel while flicking through the pages of your parents’ or grandparents’ old albums.

Must the Yearbook contain photos from only one year? Absolutely no. It can as well be a story of your relationship with someone, a chronicle of sports events or a review of birthdays or anniversaries.

Is Yearbook always a book? No. The product that will tell your story depends on you and your choice only. You need to consider the time you want to spend on designing it and the number of photos you have. It will definitely be easier and faster to prepare a Yearbook Calendar than a whole Book but it’s all up to you.

Why is a Yearbook worth creating?

Everybody struggles with procrastination at times. Cleaning that drawer with literally everything inside, ordering clothes in your wardrobe, segregating photos. Creating a Yearbook makes you feel relieved due to organising all the pictures, which would otherwise never see the light of day. If you’re not planning to do anything with them, you may as well delete them now.

We’re not going to lie to you. Designing a Yearbook may take you a while. It would be perfect to gather all the necessary photos in one place first, segregate them according to date and then caption them in the Photo Book. The details in the pictures seem obvious now but in a couple of years they may be blurry and inconsistent. As the idea of the Yearbook is to organise our memories for years to come, put your heart in it.

Soon designing the Yearbook will get easier. We are currently working on new templates allowing captions under every photo and a table of content. We will also suggest a few things, a couple of tips perhaps that are worth remembering while creating Yearbooks. Follow us on Facebook or join the newsletter to be sure not to miss on anything.