Congratulations to these CSPA Crown Finalists!

Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) has recognized 19 schools printed by Varsity Yearbook for the 2023-2024 school year.

 The prestigious Crown Awards honor top student publications from CSPA members, selected for overall excellence in a head-to-head comparison by category. During adjudication, publications are evaluated based on design, photography, concept, coverage and writing. All finalists will receive either a Gold or Silver Crown Award, to be presented Friday, March 21, 2025, at the CSPA 101st Annual Spring Convention.

Join our celebration →

Brighton High School Brighton, Colorado
Casa Roble High School Orangevale, CA
Christ Presbyterian Academy Nashville, Tennessee
Christopher Columbus High School Miami, Florida
Cooper Middle School McLean, Virginia
Corning-Painted Post High School Corning, New York
Desert Ridge Junior High School Mesa, Arizona
George C. Marshall High School Falls Church, Virginia
Greenfield Junior High School Gilbert, Arizona
James Enochs High School Modesto, California
Ladue Horton Watkins High School St. Louis, Missouri
Lindbergh High School St. Louis, Missouri
Longmont High School Longmont, Colorado
Mead High School Spokane, Washington
Mountain View High School Mesa, Arizona
Parkway West High School Ballwin, Missouri
Pleasant Grove High School Texarkana, Texas
Ruben Dario Middle School Miami, Florida
The Harker School San Jose, California

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Ready, Set, Get Inspired

As any seasoned adviser will tell you, ideas are everywhere and once your brain is trained to look for them, you can’t help but see themes, font pairings or design ideas literally EVERYWHERE.

Here are just a few places you and your students might want to consider looking for ideas:

  • Go camp out in the Barnes and Noble magazine section and look through as many different types of magazines as possible to get a feel for what the current design trends are, headline ideas and popular fonts that you might want to use in your book
  • If you don’t have access to a local, well-stocked book store, try Zinio which offers a pretty eclectic mix of magazines that can be browsed online. You don’t need a subscription to see excerpts from them if you go to Read Article and start there
  • Behance is like Pinterest for graphic designers
  • Billboards are a great place to get headline ideas
  • Restaurant menus might offer font possibilities
  • Visit your guidance office and look for college brochures and catalogs which may offer design ideas that could be adapted to your yearbook or you can view many of them online at Issuu.com and search college brochures
  • Check out websites for companies you love and do screen shots when you find colors, fonts, graphics or type design that strikes your fancy
  • The digital version of Portfolio, our annual collection sampling parts of the most amazing books from across North America, showcases covers, designs, themes and more.

After your staff has had an opportunity to gather ideas from a variety of sources, ask everyone to present their five favorites and explain why they chose them and how they can see them being used in your book. This is also a great way to create an idea file for future reference so be sure to ask them to leave the samples for you to display in your classroom or to place in a filing cabinet.

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Get Excited for these eDesign Features

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Modern design trends: Yearbook edition

The energetic and caffeinated Dan Mueller jumps right in with countless examples of graphic design inspiration. It all comes back to story and how you convey that visually.

Depth in design is Mueller’s favorite thing. He repeats it early and often that it’s all about depth — or layers. And don’t get him started on pull quotes…

Four ways to step up your type game

Vary these elements within your theme look to create contrast in typography.

  1. Size
  2. Color
  3. Font
  4. Case

He has some great tips about cutouts and the amazing background remover tool now available in Canva via eDesign.

After showing off tons of great yearbook work from the past year, Mueller does a PSA for Flipster and reveals some professional work. Magazines are great sources of inspo for yearbook. It could be as big as a feature or as small as a mod.

Be inspired by yearbook spread designs from across the country — and learn what makes them fresh. Watch the video.

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Typography in yearbook design

Tell your school’s story with type 

Self-appointed font queen and all-around outstanding yearbook adviser Carrie Faust gets pumped for letter forms. After starting with “wooooh” she defines the terms surrounding typography.

Make sure to stay tuned until the very end of the video for some very cool inspo spreads.

Typography is by definition artistic. Faust says type should be designed just as much as other elements of the theme.

Spend time with it. Convey the message. Speak to the content.

Parts of type

Faust says to find the font poster in your kit and teach it to your staff.

  • Ascender
  • Baseline
  • Cap height
  • Counter
  • Descender
  • Set width
  • X-height

Types of type

It’s all about that serif. Carrie really breaks these down in the video.

  • Oldstyle
  • Sans serif
  • Modern
  • Slab serif
  • Script/Handwritten
  • Decorative/Novelty

She recommends locking down the “punk freshman” with only a couple font families. And, Faust talks about choosing contrasting type for display and mod headlines.

Fonts can make or break your book. You’ll be able to distinguish the different types of fonts, learn theories about how many fonts should appear in your book, and see how typography can drive your design. Watch the video. (Don’t miss out: Link expires on Oct. 15.)

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