Creating a Yearbook? Get Started with Yearbook Page Design Basics

Photography and writing make up the bulk of any yearbook’s contents, but awesome design is what brings it all together, giving a finished book eye-catching appeal. Design details make the difference between a yearbook that gets dusty on the shelf, and one that students will want to look through again and again, even years after leaving school.

With over 75 yearbook themes to choose from, Mixbook makes it very easy to get those design details right. You can create a custom yearbook that your students will love by simply dragging and dropping photos into your favorite theme. You can also customize every element of a theme to make a yearbook that’s totally unique.

Before getting started, it’s very helpful to understand yearbook page design basics. This guide covers the key elements of yearbook design, and also offers plenty of tips to help your yearbook team turn its vision into reality.

Tip: Be sure to check out our comprehensive yearbook planning guide.

Choosing yearbook themes

The number one step in designing a yearbook is picking a Mixbook theme. Browse the collection and look through all the themes that suit your school’s character as well as your yearbook team’s design ideals. You can filter the theme options by school category (e.g. preschool, elementary, middle, or high school), or by color.

There are many different aesthetic styles to consider, from cute illustrated elementary yearbooks to the refined style of the editorial academy yearbook. Your school might be suited to a minimalist black and white yearbook design, or a bright and colorful one like the yearbook primaries theme.

All the themes are 100% customizable, so think about bringing together the various design details you love from multiple themes. For example, maybe you love the color-blocked style and elegant typefaces of the school colors yearbook, but you also want some of the hand-drawn background and sticker patterns of the modernistic theme. Simply start with either theme and customize it to copy those other design details, too.

If there’s a middle school yearbook theme you like, but your yearbook is for an elementary school – no worries! Just customize the text, page headers, and other features to match your particular school.

As a yearbook manager, consider which team members will be involved in the decision of choosing a theme. You could leave it up to the design team, or let every team member vote on a theme. If necessary, get a final approval from the appropriate person at the school.

Customizing a yearbook theme

When you’re customizing your chosen theme, it’s helpful to understand yearbook page design basics. Fortunately, the Mixbook Studio™ offers smart tools that make it easy to customize a theme while maintaining all the professional design details. Consider the following basic guidelines for yearbook page design customizations.

Color scheme

Changing the colors used in a yearbook theme is one of the most common customizations. Switching the theme’s color palette with your school’s official colors is a great choice, ensuring your yearbook immediately evokes school-day memories. You might combine your school colors with neutrals, like black, white, gray, or taupe, or a single accent color.

For preschool and elementary school yearbooks, a whole crayon box of colors might be appropriate. Private and Christian schools might lean toward a more elegant color palette, while Montessori schools could embrace colors found in nature.

Colors are customizable for all design elements in a Mixbook theme, including:

• Backgrounds
• Text and text boxes
• Photo frames
• Stickers

Click on any element on a yearbook page and use the pop-up menu bar to see the color options. For colored photo frames, click on the photo, then click “Edit,” then “Border” in the pop-up menu. Select the color you prefer. Use the “Backgrounds,” “Text,” and “Stickers” panels to the left of the studio space to adjust colors for these design elements.

Tip: Read Editor Advanced Tips and Tricks for more about color customizations.

Layouts

The “Layouts” panel to the left of the studio space is where you can customize the composition of photos, text, and other design elements on any page. A theme comes with its own layout suggestions already on the pages, and you can change these at any time. Try the “Auto-Layout” tool to see recommended layouts in just one click, or browse the layout options in the panel.

You might customize layouts further by moving elements around on the page. Click and drag elements, rotate, resize, and reorder overlapping photos in the pop-up menu. However, note that it’s often best to stick with one of the recommended layouts. The best layouts align all elements to an invisible underlying grid for a neat and balanced composition that pleases the eye.

Backgrounds

From crisp, solid white to exuberant rainbow patterns, background designs define the look of any page or spread. Whichever end of the minimalist-to-maximalist spectrum your yearbook occupies, make sure your backgrounds have a consistent look throughout. You might alternate three to five different background options throughout the book; any more can look chaotic.

Use the “Backgrounds” panel to browse different designs, select a solid color, or adjust the opacity of a background. You can also upload your own image files to use as a background. Examples include your school’s logo or crest, or a photo of the main school building.

Text and typography

Typography is one of the most important considerations in yearbook page design. If you don’t want to use the fonts featured in your theme, it’s easy to customize them. Have your team choose one font (and only one) for each of the following:

• Header text
• Body text
• Decorative accent text (optional)

Use the same one or two fonts throughout the yearbook for a cohesive design. Make sure those fonts are clear and legible at all sizes, and not too similar to each other. It’s often best to pair a serif font with a sans-serif one.

When needed, use bold, italic, underlining, and different sizes of each font to distinguish key text elements. Decorative or novelty fonts can be fun for accent text only, but not for essentials that need to be easily readable.

Design accents

Design accents like stickers, shaped or colored photo frames, drop shadows, and filters can add visual interest to your yearbook design. Use these accents thoughtfully and consistently throughout the yearbook. For example, if you’re rounding the corners of the photo frames on your portrait pages, do so for all of the frames and not just a few. (To do this, click “Radius” in the photo pop-up menu, adjust the corners, then click “apply to all.”)

If you find a sticker that suits your yearbook design, use the same sticker in two or three different places. For example, a polka dot pattern could be used as a mid-sized corner decoration for select spreads, a linear border for others, and an opaque overlay elsewhere. This is a much better way to add visual interest than using three different stickers in each of those spots.

Best practices for yearbook design

Your yearbook team members do not need to become design experts to create an amazing yearbook, but they’re sure to pick up plenty of new design skills along the way. A lot of the yearbook page design basics are simple and intuitive – you can just tell if a page looks good or not. But, it’s still helpful good to keep the following best practices in mind while designing a yearbook:

• Composition: The arrangements of elements on a page are more pleasing to the eye when they follow composition guidelines. Read about the art of composition including the rule of thirds and the golden ratio.
• White space: Don’t cram every square inch of every page with content. Leaving ample white space around your images and text makes pages much easier to browse, and generally nicer to look at. (Tip: White space isn’t necessarily white; it can be any uncovered negative space.)
• Hierarchy: The most important elements on a page should catch the eye first, whether it’s with a larger size, bolder color, or attention-grabbing accent. Hierarchy in design can also indicate equality – student portrait pages are a good example. Every student is equally important, so all the photos on a portrait page are the same size.
• Alignment: Mixbook’s layouts are all designed to keep elements aligned on an invisible grid, which gives your pages and spreads a neat and balanced look no matter the composition. When you move elements by dragging and dropping, note the yellow guidelines that pop up to help you keep them aligned. Text alignment should be consistent, too, for example, all captions centered and all body text left-aligned.
• Contrast: Contrast is important for readability. Keep a strong contrast between text and backgrounds so that it remains easily readable e.g. use white text, rather than black, on a navy blue background. Contrast also influences the visual interest of your yearbook. Even with a super-minimalist design, a brighter pop of contrasting color for a header text box or a crisp linear accent can improve the appearance of a page.

Ready to work on your custom yearbook?

The best way to learn yearbook page design basics is by doing, so get started on your custom yearbook asap. Visit our education page to request a speedy quote, and a Mixbook yearbook representative will reach out within 24 hours. You’ll be designing yearbook pages like a pro in no time!