- Today I came up with the idea for my capstone project and created this website. I want to do something for the future yearbook staffs so that they have something to reference and learn from. I wish that I had something like that when I was starting out in yearbook. I did not know anything when I first joined, and it would have been so nice to have something like this to reference. My hopes for this website are that it can be referenced for any questions concerning yearbook. I also hope that it saves editors a lot of time explaining things to newbies, because when everyone understands what is happening and how to do things it saves a lot of time editing and doing everything before deadline. There were way too many times where I had to stay up and redo things before deadline because it was done wrong, and my hopes with this is that it helps the organization and implementation of the yearbook.
- Today I went through and created the tabs and pages that I wanted to include on my capstone website. I decided which aspects of yearbook were the most important and how they can best be organized for people to understand. I made a tab for the most important things and then broke it down with different pages for different areas of that specialty.
- As part of my blogs, I will also be including things that I did in yearbook class so that in the blogs people can also understand what happens in class and I can share my perspective about what happened when we actually did the things that I am discussing in the blog posts. Yesterday and today were club pictures. There were pictures in the auditorium after school and in the aux gym before school. I had to redo the schedule several times to ensure that all of the clubs were able to fit into the reserved times. In the auditorium, as clubs were starting to arrive, I organized them by club and by height order in the aisles. When it was time for their club to go onto the stage they were already in order. Getting the names for the people in the auditorium was a little harder because they could not slide over while the next group got in place. It was important to be very efficient and to always do the names from left to right. I scheduled all of the big clubs on the same day in the aux gym. They were not all going to fit on the risers in the auditorium, and it is easier to fit more people in the picture and have more rows in the gym. For the picture day in the gym, there were two photographers so we were able to have two clubs taking their picture at the same time which helped speed it along. There were also two photographers for the auditorium, but there was not enough room on stage for two stations so the schedule got backed up because I had planned for two stations. I would recommend calling and confirming the amount of photographers a few days in advance so that you can readjust the schedule if need be.
- Today was the worknight for our second deadline. On this worknight I worked a lot on design and making sure that everything fit with the style sheet. I spent much more time than I should have changing silly errors on the style sheet, something that I need to address with my staff because it takes a lot of time. During this worknight, we ordered Dominos pizza and brought dessert and during dinner we watched funny videos and just hung out. While worknights are a lot of work, they are also a great time for the staff to bond. It is great to be able to see everyone working and as they are working they are laughing and listening to music. At the beginning of the year I would recommend asking staff what their top 5 favorite songs are and making a playlist for worknights. If someone doesn’t know someone else’s song it makes for a great conversation point. Usually our worknights last until around 8:30 or whenever everything is finished.
- Before every deadline, we send our pages to Mr. Fulton for approval. Today I printed out the pages to submit to him for the second deadline. In order to do this, I saved each spread as a pdf and then printed it. After doing this, I wrote a letter to Mr. Fulton explaining that the design for the spreads is not yet final, as things always get moved around before spreads get sent, and I put the pages in his mailbox. Deadlines are always on a Monday night, so I always try to send Mr. Fulton the pages at least the Thursday before the deadline so that there is time to review the pages and make any changes necessary.
- This week I have been spending a lot of time working on the people pages because a lot are due for the second deadline. People pages are a good way to share individual student stories with the school, all while keeping with the theme of the book. I spent a lot of time redesigning all of the people page packages and redoing the text wrap on them. Text wrap is hard and tedious to do, but I think it looks really cool. A lot of the time I just go ahead and redo things that people did not do correctly because I want this book to be perfect in every way. I know there are pages that were sent already with errors and I do not want any more. The people pages this year were hard to find content for because the last few years we have done so many individual stories that everyone who is well known and does something interesting has been covered. It is a lot harder to find people with interesting stories and hobbies because often times times they do not openly share them.
- Second deadline is done! This deadline worked really well for the staff and everyone was on top of it the whole time. This allowed for us to be able to send around 20 extra pages (consisting of club and people pages) this deadline. Sending extra pages for earlier deadlines is really important because then you do not have to send as many for the later deadlines. This is particularly important because deadline 3 is always only like a month long, and it includes winter break and times where there is a lot of snow days. The publishing plant does not care if we have snow days and cannot go to school to work, the deadlines are final and if we do not make it we have to pay extra.
- This week was the first week back from winter break and the start of a new deadline. I updated the ladder and created new teams. I like to rotate the teams and team leads for each deadline so that everyone has experience leading and learning design. Also, it is good for people to have a chance to work with different people, because there will always be people who are more invested than others, and it is good to draw those people in and give them responsibility so that they understand the importance of their work. This week I also worked to push baby ad sales to seniors.
- This weekend I went through three years of documents on Google Drive for yearbook and collected pdfs, lessons, powerpoints, and documents that I plan on using to help me write the pages on my website and/or include on the website under the documents tab. Everything that I collected and dug out were things that helped me as a newbie or really impacted me over my three years of being a yerd.
- On Monday we have our third deadline. This deadline has been very tight because we only had around a month to get roughly 30 pages finished. This deadline we sent a lot of people pages because it was easiest to finish in the time crunch. The stories were not where I would have liked them to be journalistically, but they were fine considering the circumstances. This deadline I also sent the opening. It was really hard for me to write the opening copy because I wanted it to be perfect and I wanted everyone to get chills reading it. I have been writing drafts since October, but nothing ever quite fit until I was forced to send it in to make the deadline. The opening copy is important because it is the first thing that people read and it sets the tone for the entire book. I wanted it to be really really good and I had countless drafts. Usually, the opening copy gets sent the first deadline, but I had been pushing it back and moving around spread deadlines to get it perfect. I am happy with the way that it turned out and I think that it embodies exactly what I wanted it to.
- Lately I have been working on pushing baby ad sales. We still have not sold enough baby ads, so I printed out a lot of ad flyers and went through to all seniors who bought a book and not a baby ad and wrote them one. I also did this for seniors who were covered a lot in the book and did not buy a book or an ad. I sent them a flyer to buy a book and to buy an ad. Then, I took these and asked Mrs. Greiner to have the runners deliver them to the students during class. This push increased sales and earned us more baby ad purchases.
- Today I worked on the “business and sales” tab of my website because that is what I have been working on in class recently. Writing down all of the sales and advertising advice was good for me because it reminded me of what I can do now in order to help with the yearbook sales now as well as in the future.
- There are four seniors that will not be a part of the staff next year, so I have been working hard to make sure that there are at least 4 new staff members for next year. I used the application from last year and tweaked a few things, printed it out and put flyers on the door of 603. I also emailed the English teachers from all grades and asked if they had any students that they would recommend for yearbook and I sent them a personal invitation in case they did not pick up an application on their own. In order to advertise this, I also made a slide for the announcements and had staff members talk about what they liked about yearbook and what yearbook was and put it into a video for the morning announcements to advertise for joining the book.
- This week at lunch there is the club fair where clubs can set up tables in front of the cafeteria to recruit for next year. After signing up for this, I made a sign that says “come join yearbook” and then organized for someone to be sitting at the table during all lunch shifts that week. At the table was candy, applications, and books from previous years. If you offer people candy, they will come to the table and don’t let them leave without an application in hand. Every year it becomes harder and harder to recruit more people to join the staff, so it is important to be trying all year long, not just when course selection comes around. Last year I had an interest meeting and that seemed to work well also.
- Monday is deadline 4 which means that the book is almost over because deadline 5 only has a few pages. This deadline we sent the baby ad pages, the remainder of the people pages, weekly spreads, winter sports spreads, a theme spread, and the parting page. This deadline was difficult for me because I spent a lot of time redesigning all of the baby ad spreads to ensure that they were all the same according to the style sheet and that they all looked good. The baby ad spreads are important to get right because parents pay a lot of money for the ads. It also took a lot of time to get them approved by the parents again via email. A lot of the pages this deadline were done at the last minute because people were procrastinating and not doing their work on time. We made the deadline, but this shows the importance of creating mini deadlines along the way so that the editors don’t have too much stress on deadline day.
- Last year’s book, WAIT YOU’RE GONNA NEED THIS won the NSPA Pacemaker award today! This award is the most prestigious award that a yearbook can get, and it means that our book was one of the best in the entire country. After working so hard on that book and knowing that it had Pacemaker potential, my goal for the book this year was the same: to win a Pacemaker. There are a few schools around the country that have a great reputation in the yearbook community for always winning Pacemaker awards and for having the best books, and I want Freedom High School to be on that list. I am hoping that with this website I can help eliminate some of the stress about training and editing so that staffs have more time to focus on creating an award winning theme and design.
- Monday is my final yearbook deadline. This weekend I have been working really hard to make sure that the final pages that I send in are absolutely perfect. For fifth deadline the index, colophon, closing, baby ads, and weekly spreads get sent. The index is always hard to design and compile because it takes a lot of time to reflow and change so that everything fits. It also takes a lot of time for the index editor to organize how people are going to get the content to put in the index. Thankfully Jayson was super organized and got everything done early so we won’t be up super late sending spreads on deadline. This deadline I spent time designing the baby ad spread again as well as going over all of the design and content on all of the pages as I usually do. The weekend before deadline I usually spend around 15-20 hours going over all of the spreads before sending them.
- Today in class I helped them start thinking of a theme for next year. Since deadline five is over, all of the seniors stop working on the production of the book and people assume their positions for next year for the supplements. It has been hard for me not to be involved during class anymore, but I know that it is for the better because they need to learn how to do it on their own for next year. Last class I told everyone to come with as many theme ideas as they could for next year and then in class we sat in a circle and went through the steps on the theme tab in my blog in order to narrow down the idea of what they wanted their theme to be. It is always hard for people to come up with a new theme and design after working with the same one for a whole year, so it was my job to make sure that none of the ideas or themes they were talking about resembled anything close to a theme in the last 3 years of the 4 year cycle.
- Today I spent the class making a countdown sign for distribution. In order to make this sign, I got paper from the SCA room and used sharpies to write the countdown and the number of days. My idea for it is that each day I will tape up the new amount of days until the yearbooks come. I put this sign on the concession stand door so that everyone can see it in the mornings and when they are walking to the cafeteria. Even though seniors are not supposed to be doing anything to help with the spring supplement, I still try to give them advice if they ask for my help, but instead of giving them the answer I ask questions that lead them to the answer themselves.
- Today in class were the Mock it to Rock it presentations (link to the project on the blog). I think that this project helped me a lot last year to develop what kind of design I wanted the book to have. My project last year was really really similar to how the design for this year’s book turned out. I think it is important for them to have an idea of what theme and design they want the book to have before going to NV camp over the summer and finalizing their design. After the presentations I helped them narrow down the list of potential themes even more.
- May 13, day 1 of capstone. Today I worked on the tab for “how to start a new year.” This tab is very important because it captures the hardest part of creating a yearbook: starting. If the book is not started and planned for the right way the whole book can be messed up and could risk not being as good as it can possibly be.
- May 14, day 2 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “how to start a new year.” Completing this tab took me 6 hours over the course of two days. Finishing this tab was a relief because it took a while. There are many important aspects to starting a new year and setting up the book and the class organization.
- May 15, day 3 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs “for newbies.” It has been 3 years since I started yearbook so I went back and thought about what really would have helped me as a newbie. I decided to make tabs for terms and technicalities, how to interview, how to use edesign, and a collection of the notes that I have taken over the last three years. Completing this tab took me 5 hours. I personally think that this tab will be the most helpful in the future because I had the hardest time training the newbies when they first started. Hopefully with this they will be able to teach themselves a lot of it and through the blog they can find the answers to any questions they may have instead of having to ask an editor or a returner. I think that this will save a lot of time and it will allow for a conversation point with the newbies so that they can be included in the class from the start and they can take initiative and learn how to do things instead of waiting to be taught.Today I also helped sort out the nameplates for the books. It is important to have this all done before the books come.
- May 16, day 4 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “index.” The index tab took me a while to complete because of all of the strict directions that need to be followed. It is important that the index is done right because everyone looks there and uses it as a reference. The index component is more than just creating the index, it is also monitoring who has and has not been covered, which is also a very important and complicated aspect of yearbook. Completing this tab took me 5 hours. I also went into class today. It felt strange walking back into school after being done, but as soon as I walked into 603 everything felt normal again. In class, I helped them work more on developing the theme idea for next year and on the senior supplement. We started to talk about what they wanted the book to feel like and what tone they wanted the book to have.
- May 17, day 5 of capstone. Today I completed the tabs and subtabs for “EIC responsibilities.” Completing this tab took me 3 hours. When I wrote the EIC letter I was reminiscing on the year and how much I have grown and how far I have come. Being EIC was one of the best experiences I have ever had, and I think that it has helped me improve my work habits and my intrapersonal and leadership skills tremendously. I also planned the banquet today and made paper plate awards for each staff member.
- May 18, day 6 of capstone. Today I did my research presentation for capstone which took me around 3 hours. I chose to do my research presentation on photography and the aspects of it. I will use this information in the photography tab of my website. I spent a lot of time researching different settings and strategies for taking pictures.
- May 19, day 7 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “coverage.” The coverage tab is important because it includes information about the types of things that should be covered in the book and the best way to do that. Completing this tab took me 2 hours. I also worked on the organization and planning for distribution. Distribution is really stressful, so it is important that everything is well organized and as streamlined as possible to eliminate any problems or stressors.
- May 20, day 8 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “sports.” Completing this tab took me 2 hours. The sports tab includes information on how best to gather scores and design not only the sports spreads but also how to plan for which sports to cover on the gut spreads. Today I also wrote the insert for the yearbook. This insert goes in the inside of the cover to remind people that before they criticize anything in the book, that only 15 people completed this over a year and that there naturally are mistakes.
- May 21, day 9 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “class.” Completing this tab took me 4 hours. Class is a very important aspect of yearbook. It is a time when the staff can not only bond but also communicate what needs to get done and how best to do so. There are many aspects to planning the class and making sure that all of the pieces are working efficiently. This is all discussed in the tab, as well as how to prepare how to best organize it and make sure that everyone knows what they are doing.
- May 22, day 10 of capstone. Today the books came! I was at school working for 7 hours today. I arrived around 10:30 and left at 5:30. The books came at 1:30, but before then I worked on cutting the inserts for the front of the books and I also made organizers for the nameplates for distribution. I think these will work a lot better than the organization we previously had. When the books arrived, the first thing I did was check to make sure that we had all of the boxes by numbering all of them with sharpie. After this, we got to open the first box! Everything turned out exactly how I wanted it to. Then, we started stuffing the supplements and inserts into the books and then putting them in the concession stand to store. We got all but 300 stuffed by 5:30.
- May 23, day 11 of capstone. Today was distribution. I was at school working for a total of 6 hours today. I arrived around 8 and left at 2. Distribution was very stressful. Before starting at 8:15, I set up the tables with the buyers lists, nameplates in cups, boxes of stuffed books, autograph supplements, and a list of what each package was. When people started to arrive we constantly had to run more boxes of books to the tables. After 9, I stayed to stuff the remaining books before distributing again at lunch.
- May 24, day 12 of capstone. Today was distribution. I was at school working for a total of 4 hours today. I arrived at 8 and left at 10, then came back from 12 to 2. Today was not as stressful because most people had already picked up their books, but we had to read over the list and text people to come get their books because most did not know they had ordered one.
- May 25, day 13 of capstone. Today I reviewed my research presentation and and added a little bit more to it. It is important to me that this presentation is helpful because there are many important aspects of photography that I need to capture. As I was doing the research, I found that there is a lot more to photography than I had already known which was very interesting.
- May 26, day 14 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “people pages.” Completing this tab took me 2 hours. Everyone looks at the people pages to find their picture, but it is also important to worry about the coverage and content that goes on the pages. It is important to make sure that people are not covered for the same story twice and that the content on the people pages fits with the theme. On this tab I also included screenshots about how to flow the people pages.
- May 27, day 15 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “copy.” Completing this tab took me 2 hours. Along with design and photography, copy is a large aspect of the book and for competitions. There are many ways that you can write copy, some of which are highlighted in the tabs.
- May 28, day 16 of capstone.Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “photos and cameras.” Completing this tab took me 3 hours. Photography is more than just clicking a button, and some of the aspects of this are in the tab. My research project is also under this tab as it includes important information about photography and taking good pictures.
- May 29, day 17 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “clubs.” Completing this tab took be 2 hours. Clubs pictures can be very stressful and I included some strategies to minimize the stress and to make sure that all clubs get covered and have their picture taken.
- May 30, day 18 of capstone. Today I completed the tab and subtabs for “design.” Completing this tab took me 5 hours. Design is a HUGE aspect of creating a yearbook. Not only the overall design of the book, but also the individual spreads and how they add to the overall theme design. On this tab I included a lot of information about how to design a spread properly and lots of tips and tricks to make sure that it is the best it can be.
- May 31, day 19 of capstone. Today I made my video for my presentation which took me around 2 hours.
- June 1, day 20 of capstone. Today I reviewed my website and added more information to all of the tabs. I also worked on my presentation for tomorrow and finished my video.