Flipping through the pages of the yearbook at the end of the year offers students the opportunity to reflect on the memories they’ve made throughout the school year with friends, organizations and their teachers.
The yearbook staff has been working hard over the school year to create a yearbook that captures the most impactful moments of this year through photography, interviews and designing spreads.
The creation process of a yearbook starts much earlier than people realize. Students began the design process as early as summer.
“We start planning for the yearbook in June at yearbook camp and we choose our theme, color scheme, fonts, and design concepts with some professionals at Jostens and then we take everything we did there and bring it with us back to school in August,” Senior staff member Azariah Berry said.
The yearbook staff officially hits the ground running as soon as school starts, capturing the start of year events while also balancing the design process.
“When creating the yearbook we typically start with how we want to order our pages and from there we begin design. For example if we have a page we will say ‘oh we want this to be academics’ and then we get pictures of said academics and designers begin to design the page and people get interviews and write down captions” Berry said.
The work doesn’t end within the classroom. The creation of the yearbook is a large collaborative effort that spans the entire school year.
“We have summer camps, we work on weekends, we design, we take all our work apart and put it back together,” Editor in Chief Sylvie Nkole said.
Being a part of the yearbook staff is hard work, but it allows members to see firsthand all the beautiful events and experiences happening all around campus.
“I think a lot of people don’t get that when you are editor in chief, you get to know many types of people,” Nkole said. “Whether they are a part of the yearbook team or someone you are interviewing. You get to experience others without bias or stigma. Just humans being humans. I love that.”
For senior staff members on yearbook, not only is it their last yearbook they’ve worked on but it’s a last “souvenir” they can take from their high school years. The book is symbolic to them as a physical representation of the people they’ve met, the events they attended and the experiences they’ve had both while being a part of the yearbook team and beyond.
“The whole point of the yearbook is to document memories,” Nkole said. “Being in it for the past 3 years I was pretty involved in all different aspects of school life, I feel very connected to the community at Emerson, and now I’ll have memories that will last forever.”
