How to Make a Company Yearbook to Celebrate Your Corporate Culture
Creating a memorable corporate yearbook is one of the best ways to capture your company’s culture and values and boost employee morale. You can use your corporate photobooks to celebrate each of your staff members, highlight significant achievements and breakthroughs, and provide a morale boost throughout the company.
So how do you create one? This guide explains everything you need to know.
What Information Do You Need for a Corporate Yearbook?
Before getting into the details of creating a company yearbook from scratch, it’s essential to understand what information it should include.
Because your corporate yearbook will highlight different aspects of your company culture, you'll probably want to ask your employees to contribute. Ask for:
Photos
Stories
Project images
You want to capture the entire essence of your workplace, so if nobody has any photos from meetings, the kitchen, or everyday events, you'll need to start snapping away.
You'll also need photos of each employee, which you can ask them to provide - or, if you work with someone who has a knack for photography, he or she can take pictures of everyone in front of the same backdrop.
Other Information to Include
It’s also important to make sure that you include all the activities that your company participates in. Therefore, you’ll need to make room for the following as well.
Sports teams and tournaments
Business development milestones
Charity events
Holiday celebrations
Special project photos and details
Department information with photos
A message from the CEO
There’s a range of benefits that a corporate yearbook brings to the table. It allows you to capture your company’s culture that’s aligned with the personal values and needs of your employees.
Not only does it help you with employee retention to keep top talent from leaving your company, but it also shows the employee satisfaction of your company under your leadership to attract talented job seekers.
How to Create a Company Yearbook: A Step-by-Step Guide
A company yearbook can be as simple - or as elaborate - as you want it to be. Your company's size, the number of events and achievements you want to highlight, and how much space you dedicate to each employee will dictate how long it needs to be.
Determine how many pages you'll need for each section, and then decide whether you want a landscape, square, or portrait layout. School yearbooks are usually designed in a portrait layout, but this is a corporate yearbook - and you have the freedom to design whatever you'd like.
Step 1: Set a Budget
The first step of creating a company yearbook is to define a budget that you’ll be using for this project. While you might not need to worry about the budget if you’re running a large enterprise, small businesses have limited funds that they must spend carefully.
The two major expenses you need to keep in mind include the yearbook printing cost and photography expenses. You’ll also need to brainstorm with your coworkers to account for the miscellaneous expenses and materials that can impact the budget.
Once you have defined the budget for the yearbook, make sure that you advise your team to stick to it.
Step 2: Make a Content Outline
The best way to create the content outline for your yearbook is to utilize the digital or physical calendar you use for your company operations. You’ll need to pay attention to all the projects you have completed in the past year, activities that your company has performed, department information, the company’s mission statement, and corporate culture.
You can also brainstorm with your team and listen to their opinions and ideas to outline everything you want to include in the yearbook. Start by setting up an outline, like the following one:
Acknowledgments and title page
Introduction to the yearbook
Year in Review section
Employee pages
You can add more to this outline based on your company’s unique structure and culture.
Step 3: Request Photo Submission from Employees
Adding photos to a company yearbook is essential as it gives it sentimental value and makes it look more attractive. From candid snapshots of company sporting events to posed pictures of formal/informal company dinners, you can add all types of photos.
It’ll bring your yearbook’s layout design to life. Your entire team will need to collaborate to provide you with these photos. Therefore, you’ll need to put a call out for photo submissions.
Provide your team with information about the type of photos you need, based on your content outline, to fill your yearbook pages. This way, you have exciting and memorable photos that will add to your yearbook’s value.
Step 4: Create Yearbook Layout
Make sure you create a sense of consistency while creating a layout for your yearbook. You want your corporate yearbook to have a common theme for all pages to be cohesive to tie each page together. You should create a style guide or template for all the pages.
You can easily find a catchy and exciting company yearbook template online that you can use. But if you need to make a custom yearbook, you’ll most probably need to hire a professional photo editor/graphic designer or use yearbook creation tools yourself to create the layout.
You can also set a unique goal for each page if you want but make sure that all the pages have the same color scheme. Use the color palette inspired by your company’s logo to keep your yearbook aligned with your brand.
Step 5: Start Designing Pages
Once the layout work is completed, the next step is to design the yearbook pages. It’s the most exciting yet critical step of the entire process.
There isn’t a set of defined rules that you must follow while designing spreads for your yearbook. You can create it by following the basic design guidelines to create an appealing spread, and there are no straightforward Dos and Don’ts.
Step 6: Design the Yearbook Cover
Remember, the cover will be the first thing everyone will see about your yearbook. It’ll set the tone for everything you have inside, including beautiful photos and memories your company has created.
Therefore, it must be eye-catching and should have your brand’s logo. You can also include your company statement on the cover if you want.
Here’s a list of tips you can follow to create the cover of your company yearbook that stands out.
Include visuals and avoid adding too much text, as it distracts viewers from the design. People will have ample time to read the text that you have included inside the book.
Mix and match the design components as long as they follow a hierarchy. Show the important parts using large visuals so the viewers can see them instantly.
Follow the spine layout, which means that your yearbook should be the only thing that you see once placed on a bookshelf.
The cover must complement the entire design and theme of your yearbook. So, make sure that you follow similar stylistic elements and the color palette throughout.
Step 7: Add Content
Once the layout, cover, and designs for spreads are ready, it's time to start filling the yearbook with text and photos. You want to make sure that you keep the content lively and fun.
You’ll have multiple sections in your yearbook, and to make the content-adding process easy, help your team to add photos and content to the pages allocated for them.
Guide them to follow the outline and style guide and advise the editor/graphic designer to work with the team throughout the design process.
Here’s a list of some important tips you can follow to create yearbook spreads.
Don’t use more than a couple of fonts
Stick to a specific color palette throughout
Size your elements wisely
Be mindful while placing photos and text
Focus on readability
Step 8: Proofread and Edit
Now, as your yearbook is filled with content, you’ll need to proofread it to ensure it doesn’t have any grammatical or spelling mistakes. You’ll also want to double-check the placement of photos and text and the layout of each page.
It’ll take a lot of time and if you can’t do it yourself, consider delegating this task to the editor. Advise them to use a text editor to correct all the mistakes and focus on readability.
The editor must also review each picture for cropping and quality. After that, your meticulously picked yearbook will finally come to life after the editing process.
Step 9: Get the Yearbook Printed
Finally, the big day has arrived. It's time to put your yearbook into print! You can congratulate your team and yourself on all the hard work. In addition, you could also organize a team celebration if you want.
Get your team excited about the upcoming company yearbook. Next, you can set up a last brainstorming meeting with your team to discuss the yearbook’s distribution and promotion.
Step 10: Publish Online
The corporate yearbook must be published online. It can assist your company in reaching more prospective consumers and increasing brand awareness. You also want to share the yearbook on social media platforms to boost your digital presence.
7 Creative Tips to Make Your Corporate Yearbook Spectacular
Use these seven tips to make your yearbook more creative - and a more accurate reflection of your company culture:
Have everyone take selfies and submit them as their "official" yearbook photo.
Create side-by-side throwback photos and current photos of each employee.
Gather at least one fun fact about each employee and use it as a caption beneath his or her photo, like "Susan is in a Led Zeppelin cover band" or "Dave watches Golden Girls reruns every night."
Set up a "Favorite Quotes" page that each employee can contribute to.
Build a page for big moments happening outside the company, whether locally or in different countries. Highlight trends, career opportunities offered, charity work, and business development milestones.
Add a "Where Are They Now" page for valued employees, you all miss it.
Include a "Bloopers" page for mistakes that turned out to be funny - but make sure everyone can see the humor in the things you intend to share.
FAQs About Making a Company Yearbook to Celebrate Your Corporate Culture
What Is a Company Yearbook?
A company yearbook is a beneficial business tool that allows you to highlight the achievements and events of your company. It also reminds your employees of all the good times they spent in the past year to give them a feeling that they belong somewhere.
What Should I Write in My Company Yearbook?
You can write stories and add photos about the memorable moments of your organization in your company yearbook. It can also include your company’s mission statement, a message from the CEO, or anything else that highlights the positive side of your company.
Why Is a Yearbook Important?
The company yearbook is important because it highlights the environment and culture of your organization, improves employee satisfaction, attracts new talent, provides opportunities to find valuable partners, improves brand awareness, and helps you reach more potential customers.
Final Words
Time and tide do not wait for anybody. It is vital to create a corporate yearbook to aid in the expansion of your business. It can open new doors of opportunities for your business to scale and reach new heights.
The key is to get everyone to contribute - you'll get more photos, great stories, and a better experience when you can get most of your employees to pitch in and share what they have. Your corporate yearbook is going to be an amazing reflection of your company culture.
