Yearbook
Once Upon a Time, the place where stories begin. Everyone has a story, everyday adds to the story, every year we celebrate the story of the past 12 months with birthdays. Stories of time were first told orally and casually began drawing figures in the dirt, being the first “picture” or illustration. The telling of history has come a long way from epigraphy, “writing on hard durable materials such as stone of postsherds (ostraca) but some use the term for any inscriptional remnants of past civilizations.” (Ryan) History has been told in many different ways over time. One way that schools began writing their own histories is through scrapbooking which morphed into the school annual, later called yearbook. A scrapbook is defined as, “a blank book( most of the time a binder) in which various items( as newspaper clippings or pictures) are collected and preserved.” (Scrapbook) Scrapbooks are handmade and very personal to the person who is making it. Yearbooks can be just as personal to someone, but have to be versitile enough to cover the entirety of the year and population. Scrapbook pages are easily transferable or changeable unlike its counterpart the yearbook that is printed and bound by the publishing company by a cover, or two boards connected by thick paper known as endsheets. Seeing that yearbooks started as glorified scrapbooks and today are no longer confined to the two boards of a cover due to advances in technology, are physical tangible yearbooks on their way out of cycle?Yearbooks are based on seven c’s of success: class, cover, coverage, create, community, commerce and celebrate. (Lundgren, Akers & Eastman, 2010) These items never go out of style because we enjoy seeing how we affect others and telling others about it.
Any history book is about telling the the who, what, when, where, why and how of any time period and/or event, in journalism terms we refer to this as the five W’s and H or WWWWWH.
What is a yearbook- A Yearbook is a book to show of the Why,What,When,Where, How of WHO they are and what has been done in the confines of the timespan set by the organization.
Who is it for: A Yearbook presents history to pre-school, elementary, middle, high school and university students and faculty, and sometimes companies and
organizations where history is important.
When does it happen, when is is published: Books are published yearly, anniversaries, monthly; There is no confines on how often a yearbook can be produced. Publishers are open year round.
Where is a yearbook found: Yearbooks can be found as books, website, social media, or magazines for companies, schools, fraternities, and more.
Why have a yearbook: To show off and brag, To remember and share about your group.
How do we do it: print, digitally, graphically developed by an adviser and published by a company.
Every day, every minute, every second is different than the last, so just as time changes so must the books that share time with us. Just because the book is covering the same school or organization from year to year, does not mean that the people producing the book have it easy and can just go with the same plan as last year. The early yearbooks were plain and simple cut and paste scrapbooks, or as Warren called them to be begin “ graduating class pictures.” (Perich) These original books were not easy to mass produce because every piece that went into them were put and pasted by hand. It was not until the very late 1990’s that yearbooks went away from being created full by hand. There is not much out there about specific dates with these transitions because schools were all learning the computer technology at different times. (Benavides, 2012)
Yearbooks come with a history and theme, just like a Starbucks in Texas may have pictures of a cowboy on the wall. Jim Jordan, a yearbook adviser from California said, “Developing a theme idea throughout the yearbook not only helps to unify the book, but also adds a special dimension of involvement for readers.”( Jordan) Theme helps us decide the WWWWWH angle we will take. Darilee Bednar, a researcher of yearbooks, found in a 1927 yearbook an attempt to show theme by giving the students Egyptian nicknames (Bednar, 2004). ( as pictured below)
(Bednar, 2004)
Tying in mugshot pages, the pages in the book that have the rectangle photos of the entire student body, was a very individualized attempt at showing theme. A yearbook cover is the lead of presenting the theme to the audience. The first printed books did not have the technology to present picture images on the cover of the yearbook. These early books would emboss outlines of images and imprint the title of the yearbook on the front. The spine, the outside meeting point of the leather pieces that cover the boards that make up the cover, is also imprinted with the schools name, the year and the edition of the book. Bekah Cremer said, “ There is no such thing as a perfect theme, but any theme can become a great theme. The trick is to develop the theme thoroughly and commit to it.” For the Castle Hills 2012 yearbook, the superintendent imposed a theme upon the yearbook because it was going to be the “schools theme” but cultivate lacked through out the year and ended up being forced in the yearbook. Theme takes research and understanding along with a connection to the key audience.
“Your theme’s verbal and visual elements can influence every choice your staff makes. Headline, caption and body copy fonts; folio graphics; sidebar content and format; even the questions your reporters ask sources can all relate back to your theme concept. The more your staff refers back to its theme phrase and concept and thematic design elements, the stronger your theme will be.” ( Cremer, 2011)
Theme is purely a new way to show the WWWWWH of the school year, so in the case of Castle HIlls the yearbook is not always a book with a eagle on the front and blue and gold through out because for a kinder through twelfth grade school you would end up with thirteen of the same book. Theme is not easy and neither is coverage. The general rule of thumb student coverage in the yearbook refers to the three-peat rule: a student should be able to find themselves at least three times in the yearbook, 1. mugshot 2. team or organization group pictures 3. somewhere else, or what the yearbook world calls the "three-peat". In most schools and organizations the people in the books see a $45 to $150 dollar price tag attached to receiving a book. A person does not want to pay that much to see themselves once or twice, especially in the era of Facebook where photos are shared instantly and "Timeline" keeps your history for you.
Major sections in the yearbook are student life, academics, athletics, mugshots, advertisements, and index. The student life section covers events such as dances and pep rallies along with the day to day things that the people covered see going on. In the Churchill High School 2007 edition of the Chancellor, there were student life spreads about the building being built on campus, the things kept in the trunks of peoples cars, what students did during the summer and graduation. The academics section covers anything and everything to do with the classes taken by the students: lessons, field trips and labs. Anything and everything sports can be found in the athletic section. Mugshots are another name for school pictures. Schools often defer the cost of publishing the yearbook by selling companies ads, as well as allowing parents to purchase advertisements to honor their child for a big achievement or graduation. The index if often the first pace students go to in the yearbook because it is the list of every person covered in the yearbook in alphabetical order with the numbers of the pages in which you can find them. Over time how these section have been presented have changed from heavy writing as seen in the 1900’s yearbooks:
(Bednar)
Ironically, there is not much history written about yearbooks. As more media accessibility came, so did the change in yearbook design. Publishers like Jostens, Walsworth and Herff Jones have fought over many years to be the publisher of yearbooks. Around the 1980’s partial color became a hit in yearbooks, where a signature ( or 16 page grouping) would be printed in color. ( Walsworth)
(Walsworth)
Over time the interface for creating yearbooks has gone from cutting and pasting, to computer. On computer today their are two interfaces used: the website connected with the publisher and Adobe Indesign. Many companies are pushing their personal website due to the world wide accessibility to the website and servers that can host pictures and advertisements for you, instead of on your hard drive or server. As computers became smaller and magazines boomed, the yearbook publishing world knew something had to change. In 2000 books began to be published in full color. Once the full color change happened, the next step was the make the yearbook read more like the magazines and websites. Design became build around modules, allowing for a more magazine and website look.
( From traditional to)
Yearbooks are not dead, yet. They are fighting hard to stay up with the times. In todays books, one can find pages built like Facebook or a page with a Twitter feed down the side. Another new fad found in todays yearbooks are QR readers- the bar code squares that smart phones can scan and find additional information. The old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” (Gary) plays the biggest contribution yearbooks thriving, social media has made photographs a big deal.
In closing, Class and community tie together by showing the things that students are involved with, and showing perspective students what they could be doing if and when they attend that school. As much as we do not want to admit it, we do judge a book by its cover, and the cover is the first place you see the theme of the book. The theme is put in place to create a motif to follow and the celebrate the year. Last but not least is the commerce, no one wants to buy an ugly book. If we take these seven pieces together, we have built a yearbook fit for 1850 all the way to 2020. Yearbooks don’t die, they morph into what the media wants it to be.
Resources
(2012). Classmates yearbooks. Memory Lane. Retrieved from http://www.classmates.com/yearbooks/
Bednar, D. (2004, October 07). What i know about yearbooks with lots of pictures.. Retrieved from http://thirdstbooks.com/talk1a.html
Benavides, M. (2012, March). Interview by AE Huffman [Personal Interview]. Jostens yearbook.
Cremer, B. (2011). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.walsworthyearbooks.com/idea-file/51110/moving-your-theme-beyond-the-cover/
From traditional to modular in seconds. Jostens, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.yearbookauthority.com/pdf/Design/DModulardesign.pdf
Gary, M. (n.d.). A picture is worth a thousand words . Retrieved from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words.html
Jostens. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jostens.com/
Jordan, J. [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.walsworthyearbooks.com/idea-file/7740/theme-concept/
Lundgren, G., Akers, M., & Eastman, G. (2010). 123 student yearbook guide. Jostens, Inc.
Mackay, S. (2012, March). Interview by AE Huffman [Personal Interview]. Jostens yearbook.
Perich, S. [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/06/03/127412786/yearbooks
Ryan, D. (n.d.). The history of writing. Retrieved from http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm
Scrapbook. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved May 16, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scrapbook
Walsworth yearbooks. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.walsworthyearbooks.com/
Yearbook. Mount Gilead School District Retrieved from http://www.mtgilead.k12.oh.us/olc/class.aspx?id=14928&s=1081
