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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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.