Tucsonian
Tucson High Magnet School, Tucson, Ariz.
NSPA Pacemaker Finalist
Theme: You are here
Adviser: Kathleen Koppy
Editor: Marc Small
Walsworth representatives: Whitney Moore, Dale Thompson
The theme of the 2010 Tucsonian enabled the staff to look at changes their school faced in the new school year, such as budget cuts and gym renovations. The uncertainty of the situation led the staff to discussions about what they could count on.
“All we could deal with was, ‘You are here,’” adviser Kathleen Koppy said. “We said, ‘We are just going to deal with whatever shows up.’”
To visually represent that theme, the staff chose the bus routes that students took to get to school. A portion of a map showing the school’s location serves as the focal point, with brightly colored bus route lines — green, red, blue and yellow — traversing the rest of the cover. The circle showing the school’s location is embossed, adding emphasis. The theme logo presented on the cover introduces the bold style that will reappear throughout the book. This cover uses imagery that is familiar to the students of Tucson High Magnet School to introduce students to the yearbook and invite them inside.
The colored bus-route lines from the cover of the book continue inside. A key that also serves as a table of contents accompanies a map of the school. Each section also has been given a spin-off title, a color and an icon. For example, the academics section has been named “mental” and paired with an icon of a head and the color green. This icon appears throughout the “mental” section as well as on the school map on this endsheet. This consistency helps orient readers and adds to the professional presentation of this yearbook.
The opening copy is written from a third-person point of view, just like the theme phrase itself. “You are all about the next new thing. You are so caught up in today that you don’t look at what brought you here or where you are going,” it begins. The copy goes on to paint a picture of the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year and encourage students to make use of every second of time at Tucson High Magnet School.
The design theme of the Tucsonian is further developed on the opening spread with more bus-route lines and a circular photo that mimics the look of a bus stop on the routes. It is clear the staff studied bus-route maps and modified the designs to fit their purpose.
The consistency of design elements is impressive. Fonts, colors, graphic elements and spacing are all impeccably executed, creating a cohesive, theme-driven book. As the reader explores more of the 2010 Tucsonian, it becomes clear that the four bus-route lines introduced on the cover and carried through the opening spreads represent each section of the book. The green line, for example, represents the “mental” or academics section.
Notice the left-page folio is near the top of the page and uses the compass rose icon as a graphic element. The right-page folio makes use of the section’s icon, a head inside of a green circle.
The “physical” or sports section of the 2010 Tucsonian reintroduces readers to the sports icon, a running figure inside of a red circle. Notice how the folios have changed to indicate that the section has changed.
The copy on this spread describes how construction at the school’s gym facilities disrupted the routines of teams that relied on gym space to practice, but that those teams endured and many still had successful seasons.
The four section icons — a head on a green circle (academics), a running figure on a red circle (sports), a speech bubble on a blue circle (student life/people) and a question mark on a yellow circle (reference) — pull the attention of readers into the final copy block of the 2010 Tucsonian. Specific details, presented in past tense, wrap up the year, reminding students that, “You chose where to be. You chose what to do. You chose how to do it. You were here.”
