Blog Post 9

Haley
Blog Post 9

Working on the yearbook is still hectic as always. I still have to pick the main colors for the book, as mentioned before. We also have been brainstorming design ideas for pages. For example, we’ve been putting in graphics of a splatter that match the front cover and sticking in a class year, like Class of 2013. (The graphic goes at the top of the page with a gradient spreading out from the center of the page.) The splatter is black, while the text within is all colors, just like the cover.
We’d also like to do something along these lines for the page numbers, but we haven’t decided if we will be left with enough room for that, what with the ads that run along the bottom of the page. The staff also must go sell ad space to local businesses in the spring.
Paul Maxwell, who is now my new mentor, replaced Jordan Hall. He came to visit the staff yesterday and brought some helpful hints with him. He informed us of a help hotline that can always be dialed, where a team somewhat similar to the geek squad is ready to help answer any questions you may have. He also printed us off a manual on how to operate the website, www.yearbookavenue.com. This should help us out a great deal, since none of the staff or our adviser have worked on this website in the past. Paul also showed us that there is a Check For Errors button available when working on your page. That should also be very convenient.
One feature of the Josten’s website requires pictures to be tagged for indexing purposes. This entails going to each uploaded photo and identifying who people are in the picture. I’ve been busy registering people in the photos. So far, pictures of the junior class, sophomores, and the junior high have been uploaded and tagged. There’re also a few photos of the One-Act play at the ready.
Naturally, the yearbook cannot be finished by the time school lets out. It is usually the duty of the yearbook staff to work diligently throughout the summer until their product is complete. This year will be no different. Luckily, we should be able to borrow a lot of material we’ve already used for the newsletters and use that information to make writing our articles as stress-free as possible.
So far, the biggest obstacle I’m facing is arranging page layouts and designs. I think once we have developed a basic setup and applied it to each page, it should be fairly easy to simply add in captions, pProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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tures, and our stories.
Mrs. Rahn and I have been trying for a while to come up with a scheduled time for us to work for an hour a week (this not counting the time spent in class with the other staff members.) We have tentatively decided to meet on Thursdays after school for an hour, and hopefully that helps us make some progress.

Blog Post 8

Things have been going fairly well for my project, and so far I’m in the planning stages. I’ve picked a cover and a theme: “But who’s counting?” The theme throughout the book will have references to numbers. Inspiration can be fleeting, but I found it when I met with a representative from SDSU. I was handed a brochure for the college, and on the back it featured a table entitled ‘SDSU by the numbers.’ It had several facts about the school, like student to faculty ratio and the like. I’m hoping to make a general table of facts in the introduction of the yearbook, and I can add other relevant numerical statistics throughout. One thing I’ve counted and intend to include is the number of steps to the Rambler Stop. The other day the journalism staff walked there and averaged our numbers. I think, if memory serves, the average number of steps was 327. I did write it out in a word document and put it in the journalism file server for future reference.
I also had the idea of having the same font on featured on the cover of the book be repeated on division pages. (Division pages throughout the book summarize a section. Examples are Academics, Student Life, Fine Arts, etc.) Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out exactly what the font on the cover was. Luckily, Josten’s included a list of fonts to peruse, and I found a match! The font’s called Jasper.
Next, my job will be to pick the main colors for the book. Usually the editor picks around 7, depending on the number of Division Pages that are in the book. I have several color options bookmarked, and I hope to narrow down the choices in the next journalism class.
The book assignments are also complete. Hallelujah! Josten’s sends out a yearbook setup box at the beginning of the school year, and included was a paper Page Ladder chart. I spoke to each of the staff members and they all picked out which articles they wanted to write and pages they wanted to create. (The staff helping with the project consists of Ashley Krogstad, Sierra Trower, Jaynie Spier, Shelby Weston, Dacey Black, Christina Maher, and myself.) Once the written copy of the ladder was finished, I went online to Yearbook Avenue and entered in all the staff as members and helped them to create their accounts. One feature I love about Yearbook Avenue is that you can filter the view of the pages so only the ones assigned to you are visible. I think that will definitely help me and the staff stay organized.
I also gathered some information about the faculty changesProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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hat occurred this year so I can write up the article for the faculty pages.
I have also been busy finishing my research paper. I feel like it really helped me to understand the Josten’s website a lot better. I received a 94% on the paper.
I met with an obstacle for my project: Jordan Hall (my mentor) was promoted. This was great news for Jordan, not so much for me. His promotion meant that he moved to Kansas. As far as I know, my mentor selection won’t be altered, and hopefully I can still keep in touch with him via email. That’s about all I have for now!

Blog Post 7 (this one's for Mrs. Rahn's class)

(This one will be shorter than most.)

What I Know/ Have learned about my topic:

Before starting my senior project, I already knew that working on the yearbook was time-consuming, meticulous work. I never truly comprehended exactly how much effort it entailed until I was faced with a blank expectant yearbook, waiting to be graced with ideas. The main three elements you fill your yearbook with are stories, photos, and layouts. Layouts definitely take the most work. It’s a matter of picking a design that will appeal to the masses, and will also display the content with a creative edge. So far, I’ve learned that a theme is essential to planning your yearbook, and that it can define it. Each page needs to be engulfed in the theme, but also have slight variations so your annual does not become overly uniform. It pretty much will be a mountain of work; specifically, a mountain I have yet to begin to climb.

Blog Post 6

Haley
10-20-10
Blog Post 6

In my last post, I was celebrating the fact that I had finally decided on a cover for the yearbook. Since then I’ve been working on details for the inside of the book. In the process of looking for research for my research paper, I’ve been coming across a lot of good ideas for my yearbook. I’ve found page layouts that would be fairly simple to imitate, I’ve come up with phrases that suit the theme, I’ve ran across ideas that haven’t been done before in past yearbooks. I have a whole list of ideas to show Mrs. Rahn. I asked her when it would be best to go over it with her, and we haven’t gotten around to that yet. Hopefully that gets done soon. I also compiled a list of tasks and things I can complete for my senior project, but most of them involve discussion with Mrs. Rahn, too. So I really need to do that soon. Here are a few of the things on my list:
1. Begin browsing different page layouts (Check.)
2. Write stories as they occur. (I’ve been trying to work on that. Mostly, we can re-use stories from the newsletter and add to them if needed.)
3. Come up with phrases and titles that suit the theme. (That’s also in the works. I’m nowhere near finished with them, but I think I have a solid start. Most of them need to involve numbers to suit the theme, so I have phrases like “One Step Ahead” for track, and other stuff like that.)
4. Select main colors for the color scheme. (I think you pick around eight colors.)
5. Jordan Hall (my mentor) asked me to come up with a list of questions for him. So I should probably do that.
6. I should start a folder for articles that can be recycled and edited, and also include yearbook-worthy pictures as well.
7. I need to establish a list of people that will be on the staff.
8. I should also have pictures taken of me working on stuff. Are those supposed to be posed or candid?
Those aren’t all of the things on the list, but they’re definitely a start.
I need to figure out how to run the Josten’s website design, because in my research I make the argument that it is better than inDesign. I should probably know what I’m talking about in regards to that.

Blog Post 5

Haley
Blog Post 5
9-20-10

Today I met with my mentor, Jordan Hall. He showed me the new program that is used for making the yearbook. I’ve got to say I like it a lot more than InDesign, and it seems much simpler. Admittedly, I haven’t actually done any work on it yet, but it seems much better.
The website has built in effects for photos. Instead of having to edit pictures in Photoshop, you can easily edit them on the site. There are lots of special effects too, like color spotting and cutting out certain aspects of the photo. In one example, a recent volleyball picture was used. It featured Carly jumping up in the air to spike a ball. You can edit around the picture so that all that’s left of it is just her figure, which looked pretty cool. I’ve also found that the Josten’s website has SpellCheck, hallelujah! The site also automatically perfects the page numbers so that they are in the correct order.
I’ve tried logging on to the site to start messing around and learning how to run it (there’s also tutorial videos that I can watch) but currently my computer is not letting me upload any pictures, so I’ll have to fix that somehow.
After I’d gotten an introduction to the Josten’s website, it was time to pick a cover. That was a really hard decision! I narrowed it down to four choices that I initially liked. One had this whole swirl of colors, but it had a hint of flowery design so that one was out. It was a little too much on the girly side for my taste. Another had a black background and the numbers for the year stretched out with like echoes in different colors and then had pink and orange and yellow stripes along the bottom. I found this one a little too basic (not that the one I decided on in the end has too much significance to my theme, but that’s what I told myself at the time.) Then there was one with a mostly blue color scheme. It sort of looked like tile or crocodile skin, which sounds sort of ugly but it was cool in person. Anyways, I think the official name for it was Mosaic, and it was pretty neat. The problem I found with it was that the number for the year was giant and went vertically up the side, so the theme would have to go up the same way, which was pretty weird looking.
Finally, the winner! It has a black background and a giant mass of tye die colors. It looks something like someone threw several cans of different colored paints against a black backdrop. It looks pretty awesome. That’s about all IProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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2��ve done on my project for today.

Blog Post 4

Haley
Senior Project
Blog Post 4 (9-14-10)

Today I attended a yearbook workshop at O’Gorman High School with Mrs. Rahn and a few of the yearbook staff members. The workshop was really helpful. It gave me a list of theme possibilities that is approximately 15 pages long. The workshop focused on the layout of yearbook pages, and what to do and what to avoid. You’re supposed to use all one font. Avoid using decorative fonts, as they can look unprofessional and be a problem. Avoid using pictures posted on Facebook (I didn’t even think of that.) Use all the space available to you. Make sure your captions don’t just repeat what’s in the story: expand on it and add a lead-in. We learned all sorts of things at the workshop. We were shown examples that didn’t even look like yearbooks, at least not like any I’ve seen. They were really, really good! We were also encouraged to flip through our magazines and if we found a layout we liked, we could try to mimic it. I heard from other workshop attendees that they really like the latest system of creating a yearbook online. Apparently, it’s incredibly self-explanatory and easy to run, which sounds good to me. Also, there were several samples of yearbook covers there to look at. I found quite a few favorites, but didn’t pick a definite one.
One of the themes I am looking at is “But who’s counting?” I feel like that would have a lot of possibility to it. I took a lot of notes at the workshop today, and among them were ideas that would go along with that theme. I’m pretty sure I have a winner, but we’ll see how things go.
Last I met Jordan Hall, who was leading the workshop and agreed to mentor me. I have a meeting with him on Monday, so I’d better get prepared and compile some questions to go over with him.

Blog Post 3

8-10-10
On my last posts, I was wondering when I would get the chance to start learning the ins and outs of learning how to create a yearbook. Not long after that, work on the 2010 yearbook finally began.
I was busy helping Mrs. Froke with an environmental science project over the summer, though, and that took up my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Most of those days I went up to work on the yearbook after I was done with work. I also came in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I spent a lot of time in school this summer. Overall, we worked on the yearbook July 5th- August 6th, working five days a week. When I say we, I mean the staff: Marissa Jung, Sierra Trower, Morgan Trower, Shelby Weston, Christina Maher, Ashley Krogstad, and myself. And lets not forget Mrs. Rahn!
I was gone the day they went over how to set up the general layouts of the pages, so that's something I'll need to learn. All these days of working, I was learning how to use the InDesign program. Then Mrs. Rahn told me I won't be using that program for my project anyway! Apparently, there is an easier way of doing the yearbook on the Josten's website, where I could access it from home. Sweet! That'll work for me.
So this is how the yearbook creation went: Everyone had about the same number of articles to write. I had about five. This was before some people failed to finish theirs, however, and Marissa and I spent a lot of time finishing up articles. I also did a lot of the captions, and since we were scrambling to get the yearbook done before the next school year started, it was basically anyone working on anything that wasn't done. I ended up being stuck finishing the golf article, and that took quite a while. That's not counting my first attempt at working on the track story (the original draft contained a paragraph on the benefits of being in track, like wearing sweatpants. It wasn't pretty.) After that I passed that article on to Marissa and found work elsewhere.
Suffice it to say that writing articles was about my least favorite part of the yearbook. It was still fun and all, just not my favorite. Hopefully, my staff will help me out on those next year.
The best part of making the yearbook was proof-reading. That was my job. I basically had to read every page of the yearbook and circle all the mistakes (on the printed pages). Then I had to go in and access the page in InDesign and correct each mistake. A lot of the time, I was asking Mrs. Rahn, "Does this have to be capitalized? Doesn't a comma go here?" and stuff like thatProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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And then of course there was the occasional, " 'InDesign unexpectedly quit?!' What the heck?!" So if there's any uncorrected typos, that's probably my fault.
I also got to design and pick photos for the Colophon page. That was really fun, because I chose a bunch of funny pictures of the staff working over the summer.
I feel like working on the yearbook this summer really helped me out. I got a good idea of writing articles, fine-tuning captions, making sure the same picture doesn't appear twice, lining up text boxes, making sure the font size is correct, and all sorts of other fun details along that line. It was definitely good practice.