Question from a friend

[ebenz47037]

A homeschooling friend of mine has a question:

I find myself in charge of the 2005-06 Yearbook. Previously committed
volunteer didn't do a thing, and didn't tell anyone she wasn't doing a thing
until early May. So...

Just wondering if anyone has experience with any of the yearbook programs
out there? I know our group used Microsoft Publisher last year, and I've
read reviews and such for several actual Yearbook programs, but thought if
anyone had first hand testimonies, I'd like the benefit of those before we
(very quickly) consider purchasing one.

Thanks!

She's part of a homeschool co-op/group and is doing the yearbook for the group. I told her that I'd forward any answers.

Thanks!

 

[Mustard Seed]

I like making things from scratch with Illustrator and Photoshope from Adobe. But those are expensive programs and my view of them as being intuitive and my effective use of them are kind of outgrowths of having litteraly grown up around them. How many kids is this for? How many pages are they looking at doing and is the whole thing to be done in black and white or color or what? I hesitate to offer it as a possibility but I might be willing to do some graphic arts work pro bono for it if it wasn't to big. Can't make promises but get me some more details if you think she may be interested.

 

[ebenz47037]

I like making things from scratch with Illustrator and Photoshope from Adobe. But those are expensive programs and my view of them as being intuitive and my effective use of them are kind of outgrowths of having litteraly grown up around them. How many kids is this for? How many pages are they looking at doing and is the whole thing to be done in black and white or color or what? I hesitate to offer it as a possibility but I might be willing to do some graphic arts work pro bono for it if it wasn't to big. Can't make promises but get me some more details if you think she may be interested.

I will forward her your reply. I don't know much about her group. She lives in Texas. I'll do that now. I don't know how long it will be before I get an answer from her.

 

[Neo-Puritan]

A homeschooling friend of mine has a question:



She's part of a homeschool co-op/group and is doing the yearbook for the group. I told her that I'd forward any answers.

Thanks!

Well, I'm not familiar with any yearbook specific programs, but generally within the publishing industry the standard programs for doing page layout are either QuarkExpress or Adobe InDesign. Now both of these are expensive programs, but they do make Academic versions (which are completely indentical to the standard versions) available at a considerable discount to students and educators.

A previous poster mentioned Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop, both of these are great programs and would be useful, but they are not page layout programs. Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program which would be useful for creating clip-art and the like, while Photoshop is used for editing, cropping, and manipulating photos.

If they could afford it, I would actually suggest just getting the entire Adobe Creative Suite which includes InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GoLive, and Acrobat as well as a library of royalty-free photos and artwork. It isn't cheap though (It normally retails for almost $1300, but the academic version is available for $389 - http://www.journeyed.com/itemDetail.asp?T1=21121033). It is worth keeping in mind in terms of that price though it will be useful for more than just yearbook design, they can also use it for designing newsletters as well as for web page design.