How to run a yearbook cover art contest
A cover art contest lets students design the front of their own yearbook. Invite entries by the end of January, pick a winner, and photograph or scan the artwork well before your photo deadline. The flyer template, the examples and the steps below cover the rest.
It works with any yearbook vendor. All you need from the printer is a high-resolution image of the winning piece.
What’s in the kit?
- A contest flyer template in Canva to announce the contest, with the theme, the paper size and the deadline.
- Examples of cover art contests, a short PDF showing how schools have placed the winner, runners-up and class winners in the book.
- The timeline and placement advice below, which is the part most schools skip and regret.
Download link coming soon
When should the contest run?
Finish judging by the end of January. That leaves February to collect the physical artwork, photograph or scan it, label it and get it into your yearbook folder by the end of February.
The reason for the margin: artwork is the one yearbook input that arrives on paper. Somebody has to collect it from classrooms, make a good image of it and write down whose it is. It always takes longer than a photo upload, and it has to be done before your photo seal date, the day collecting stops and page building starts. How to set that date →
How do I run it, step by step?
- Decide what the prize is. Usually the front cover. Some schools pick two winners, one for the front and one for the back. Read the note on back covers below before you promise the back.
- Set the brief. A theme (or none), portrait orientation to match the cover, and the medium you accept. Tell students to keep lettering and important detail away from the edges, because covers are trimmed.
- Copy the flyer and fill it in. Theme, who can enter, the paper size, where to hand entries in, and the deadline.
- Send it through teachers. Art teachers and class teachers get far more entries than a newsletter does. A contest run as a class activity reaches the children who wouldn’t enter on their own.
- Collect and label every entry. Child’s name and class on the back of each piece, in pencil, before anything leaves the classroom.
- Judge by the end of January. A small panel works: an art teacher, a PTA member, perhaps the principal.
- Make a high-resolution image of the winner. Scan it if you can. Otherwise photograph it flat, in daylight, straight on, with no shadows, and fill the frame. This step is yours: the image in the file is the image on the cover.
- Upload the winner and any runners-up by the end of February, with file names that say who made them.
How should the winners be shown?
- The overall winner goes on the front cover, with their name and class as a small credit on the inside cover.
- Runners-up and class winners fit on one or two pages inside as honorable mentions.
- If you have spare pages, use entries as grade dividers in the portrait section: one piece of art at the start of each grade. It turns a contest with one winner into a book that shows many children’s work.
Add those pages to your ladder when you plan the book, not after, so they have a slot. What a ladder is →
Should the art go on the back cover too?
Think twice if your yearbook offers a personalized cover. Families who pay for their child’s name and photo on the cover expect that photo to be seen. If the back cover is already a contest winner’s artwork, the child’s photo has less room. A child’s photo placed over someone else’s drawing can also look as if that child drew it.
Our recommendation is to keep the back cover for personalization and give the art the front. At Rethink, the child’s name and photo on the cover are included in the +$10 personalization upgrade, and the school chooses front or back. What personalization includes →
Tips from running these.
- Run it by the end of January. The later the contest, the more likely the winner is photographed in a hurry.
- Label on the back, in pencil, at the moment of collection. Unlabelled art is the most common problem.
- Keep the originals safe until the book is printed, in case the image needs redoing.
- A cover art contest costs nothing extra at Rethink. You supply the image; it goes on the cover like any other.
Their art on the cover.
Their year inside.
Every child is in the shared school pages of a Rethink yearbook, and families who choose personalization get pages built around their own child’s class and grade.