This year, I got to help out with the yearbook in my Journalism class. Making the yearbook is not a walk in the park, and I am about to explain why.
Earlier this year, we needed to figure out what we wanted the theme of our yearbook to be. The theme is the most important piece of the entire yearbook. Every page in the yearbook follows the theme which makes it very important. After choosing the theme, we needed to figure out what we wanted the cover of our yearbook to look like. There were a lot of different designs to choose from. After a cover had been picked and agreed on by the yearbook class, we needed to start designing our pages. Laying out the pages can be stressful because everything needs to be aligned with the theme and stay consistent. We also have to take into account the number of pictures and text boxes we need. Every page has an ideal layout for all of the pictures to fit in. For example, on the sports pages, it is important to include picture boxes for the seniors, a team photo, and pictures of in-game action. We also need to leave room for the roster. After the layouts have been completed for 68 yearbook pages, it is time to start inserting pictures.
Getting pictures for the yearbook takes work and effort. In order to have enough pictures, journalism students have to go to all of the school's extracurricular activities. This includes club meetings, sporting events, and fundraisers. With everyone working together in the class, this is achievable and we are able to fill up all of our pages with pictures. After the pictures are taken, it does not get any easier. There are a lot of pictures that we have to go through to find the good ones. We also have to make sure there is a variety of pictures so everyone can be included while making sure the pictures fit the theme.
The yearbook also requires some coverage goals. The biggest coverage goal is to include everyone in the school in the yearbook at least three times. This can be tricky if we do not have enough pictures of that person. It is easier to do at a small school, but there are still those problems you run into of not having enough pictures of that certain student. One way we can make sure everyone is included is by tagging. On Jostens.com, they offer a tagging feature to make sure everyone is included, and to track how many times people are included throughout the book. All we have to do is tag the pictures after we put them into the yearbook. This also makes creating the index simple, and everyone can see which pages they appear on when they get their yearbook.
Overall, the yearbook was a fun experience. It was pretty cool seeing a bunch of blank pages turn into a fully developed yearbook. The fact that we also had control over how it looked was pretty awesome too. I recommend this Journalism class to any high school students interested in photography, graphic design, or writing.
Editor's Note: 2022 yearbooks will be delivered in July. They will be available for graduates to pick up from the office, and distributed to all other students at registration in August. There may be a very limited quantity of extras available for sale at that time.