What do two major exams, three worksheets for A.P. Art History, 20 pages of reading for British Literature and a 100-page deadline all have in common? They are due tomorrow. Without fail, you can rest assured that the busiest times in yearbook are also the busiest times for everything else in life.
Spring 2008
Everyone could use some extra money. Some people, however, take on a part-time, summer or freelance job just because they are passionate about the work. These advisers found jobs that suited their interests and hobbies.
Yearbook coverage is generally defined as the happenings at one school during one year. But what is a school? Sometimes a high school is one school with grades on separate campuses, or one school includes preschool through seniors in one or many buildings.
Students are online all the time – in online communities such as MySpace and Facebook, emailing or chatting, and sharing images and videos from camera phones. Now, ClassScene by Walsworth allows students to do those activities within the safety of their school-sponsored ClassScene website.
You can divide circles and insert images for an interesting way to add more photos to a spread.
1. Draw a perfect circle. Hold down the Shift key while drawing to make it proportional, or use the width and height (W and H fields) in the Control Bar to make it perfectly round. Consider using whole numbers for the width and height so it will be easier to do the math later.
A unique way to make images pop is to contrast them. The staff at J.W. Mitchell High School in New Port Richey, Fla., combined the techniques of cut-out-backgrounds, color/black and white, drop shadows and repetition on several spreads, including this cross country spread featured in Caught Our Eye on page 38.
When school starts and your staff is excited about the new year and the new book, it seems like everyone is working together. As the year progresses, senioritis hits and sometimes becomes a roadblock. Over the years I’ve found several ways to keep the seniors motivated to continue working until graduation.
Our staff always joked that yearbook could easily be a successful reality TV show. Can’t you see the advertising teaser now? “Find out next week, will Katie lose her cool when the editors decide not to use her template, and how does Jake take it when Emily rewrites his copy?”
There is only so much a designer can say with a white page. True, the beauty and simplicity of a plain background can be stark and dramatic, calling readers’ attention to a stunning photograph, a dramatic headline, or an isolated story. But other times, less is not more, and, well, more is needed. Textured backgrounds have been a staple of magazine designers for years. They are not too distracting, but give the page a nice feel.
Sandy Masson has counted before, and the last time she checked, there were 37 languages represented among the students at her school – Grace King High School in Metairie, La.
As the yearbook adviser at Grace King, that puts Masson in an enviable position. Her school is a melting pot, and the yearbook staff is typically a reflection of that – a mixture of kids who are male, female, Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, Indian and many other ethnicities. Masson’s diverse journalism room reflects well on the coverage in the school’s yearbook.
