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.