It Themed So Perfect

The purpose of a theme is to tell the complete story of the school year in a unique and compelling way. As a staff, you’ll have to consider how this year is different than last year even if, on the surface, it seems like nothing extraordinary has really changed. Not a small job by any means, but with the help of a theme, you and your staff will be one step closer to making it clear for your students and school community.

A well thought-out theme may be subtle to your readers only later giving them an “a-ha moment” where they put the pieces together for themselves. Once they “get it” they will clearly see that the verbal and visual pieces you chose were used purposefully and that there is a clear beginning, middle and end to the story being told so they have a complete picture of that particular school year.

Sometimes, the perfect theme will almost literally fall from the sky with little to no effort, but — more likely — it will take time and lots of brainstorming to land on the one that works best to help tell the story of your school, for this year.

Your brainstorming session might be with the entire staff or it might be in small groups who then present their top three ideas to the staff which are then brainstormed further until, as a staff, you identify the one that will work best this year.

Have you noticed that I’ve mentioned “this year” quite a few times already in this post? If you’ve been on your staff for any time at all, you probably know that mentioning “this year” in any of your copy is a big “no no,” but for the purposes of explaining theme, it’s an absolute necessity. One of your goals as an adviser and staff should be that every student owns a book for each year they are in school so, if you think about it, who would want to order a book if it was the same thing every year with maybe — or maybe not — a different cover? I don’t see as many takers for this scenario.

Now, don’t panic if your book hasn’t had a theme before. There’s no better time than now to start a new tradition, and to help you step up your theme game, you may want to consider asking your Herff Jones representative about our curriculum lessons on this topic. Here’s a Quick Start Guide for the first five weeks of high school and one for middle school that introduces Theme Projects which are the perfect way to engage your staff in choosing the best theme.

Once your staff have done their brainstorming and voting and think that they’ve landed on the perfect theme, you’ll want to put it to the 5 R’s test.

Is it RECOGNIZABLE? REPEATABLE? RELEVANT? REFRESHING? REALISTIC? And, if it’s not all of these, it’s time to rethink your theme idea.

Stay tuned for the next post about different types of themes and where you can find them.