Colour can truly enhance the visual appeal of layouts in a yearbook. However, with the added expense required for printing, it is advisable to use colour wisely. First consider a little bit of technical information.

With full colour layouts, a printed page passes through a press four times, each time receiving a different colour of ink. The inks used are cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In printing vernacular, they are referred to as ‘cmyk’, with 'k' being black. When sending in your files it is important to check with your yearbook printer to see if they want you to send them 'cmyk' or 'rgb' files.

Colour presents an additional challenge in layout and design. Here are four facing page layouts from the 2004/05 yearbook from Prince of Wales High School in Vancouver to provide some creative ideas for use of full-colour printing.

Initially, notice how a facing page layout really looks like one layout. The left and right pages are viewed as a single layout rather than two separate pages. Themes such as ‘breast cancer bbq’, ‘Halloween dance’, ‘winter week’, and ‘fashion makes us unique’ extend from the left to the right page. Each page has a dominant colour photo to attract the viewers attention and is accompanied by secondary photos that compliment the overall story.

A colour from the dominant photo is pulled and used for display type and screened background patterns. In the bottom layout, notice how the purple and pink of the textile in the dominant photo has been used.

In the 'breast cancer bbq' layout, the pink ribbon is the dominant colour. The 'fashion makes us unique' uses the blouse of the girl in the dominant photograph, and of course, 'winter week' uses green for the grass and the Santa's helpers.


Background tints and graphics that bleed off the pages also take full advantage of the selected colours. Notice how the green rules in the 'winter' layout extends across the gutter. Excellent unity is achieved with this approach.

Drop caps are used at the beginning of stories and again pull from the dominant colour selections in the 'winter week' and 'fashion' layouts. In addition, even though these layouts are different in colour from one another, they have similarities in design and they use the same font, making them belong together in the same book. All of the pages have uncluttered design, and the images vary in size and shape. There are overlaping elements, and every page has a 'hook', that is a quote, either from the text or supporting the text that makes the viewer want to read the article.

We hope the above ideas give you some new inspiration as you work on your colour layouts. Talk to your yearbook representative about additional colour concepts like spot colour and duotones.

Colour can add a dynamic element to your yearbook. Be careful to use it correctly.