Decamhian
Del Campo High School, Fair Oaks, Calif.
NSPA Pacemaker, CSPA Silver Crown
Adviser: Jim Jordan
Editors: Raphael Shanmugam and Justine Tormey
Walsworth representative: Reese Lyons
Though the Decamhian staff was inspired by the title of a movie — “Stranger than fiction” — the direction the staff took was all its own. High school, the staff writes, is full of surprises. A freak storm that caused a major power outage, teachers who brought their subjects to life in unexpected ways and a fundraiser that included a contest to win a car are just some of the events that occurred at Del Campo in 2008, thus solidifying the theme.
The staff allowed its theme to drive reporting throughout the book. For example, stories include profiles of one student who learned to fly a plane as a part of an aerospace camp and another student who won a scholarship for a wilderness program. Stories in this book are paired with clean design and stunning photography. Instead of filling pages with complicated graphics, the staff chose crisp, storytelling photos to illustrate topics.
The photography throughout the Decamhian is stunning. On this spread, the first of a two-spread opening, a full-page dominant photo is offset by a copy block isolated with white space. The balance of the white space and photo helps draw the reader into the spread and toward the copy.
Instead of repeating the theme phrase, “Stranger than fiction,” to begin this copy, the staff begins with a question, “Who would have believed it?” The opening copy covers memorable, yet unexpected, moments from the beginning of the school year — a student’s death, an extremely generous donation for the canned food drive, a football game loss when a win was assumed — and sets up the theme with this conclusion: “This year was full of moments where you couldn’t believe that it was real, you never expected it to happen, but when reality sets in, you discover how unpredictable life is, how unexpected life is. And that’s truly stranger than fiction.”
Continuing the theme, “Stranger than fiction,” into story selection, the staff told the story of a fundraiser to make money for new stadium lights by focusing on a student who won a car after his fundraising efforts. It’s not every day a student leaves an assembly with a new car; this certainly was stranger than fiction.
Consistent, thin internal margins and consistent font use (all fonts in content pages of the book are from the same family) maintain the clean, readable design plan of the 2008 Decamhian.
The copy on this divider spread, for the people section, focuses on things most students might not know about their peers. Facts such as “…you always knew that the guy who sat next to you went snowboarding a lot, but you wouldn’t have thought that DC shoes sponsored him last year,” drive home the point that students at Del Campo High School are more than they first seem.
The dots and squares from the cover and other theme pages are continued on this spread, in the colors that are consistent throughout the graphics in this book. These subtle details show that graphics don’t have to be complicated to be effective.
Features in the people section are all entertaining and closely connected to the theme. On this page, a recurring feature called “So Surreal” lets three students tell stories of the strangest things that have happened to them. Other theme-related features in this section include “I can’t believe you said that,” a collection of quotes overheard at school and their explanations. Short features like these make the people pages interesting for everybody.
This baseball spread is an excellent example of the magazine-inspired design in the 2008 Decamhian. Attention to dominance and eyeflow is apparent on this spread and throughout the book. Also notice how pieces of the “S” from the theme logo appear as decoration and help draw the reader around the spread.
The smaller story on this spread shows how reporters paid attention to the team when choosing what to write about. The subhead on this story begins, “For the first time in three years, Varsity Baseball defeats Division I Granite Bay…” This story is certainly an important one to cover, and it doubles as theme development.
