Creating a yearbook and its valuable memories

What do hash tags have to do with girls’ varsity volleyball? Rorschach tests with Memphis? Out of context, there is no correlation within each pair. In the world of the yearbook, however, everything and anything is open to interpretation.

That’s this year’s yearbook theme: Open to Interpretation. The class of 2012 is pretty atypical, as there is no Lawrence Woodmere Academy senior archetype. Despite our quirks and dissimilarities, we have managed to establish a sense of community through common objectives and interests. The goal of Portfolio, the school yearbook, is to chronicle the events that define a school year and to celebrate the graduating class.

Its staff reports on everything from the Lower School Thanksgiving feasts to the seventh grade bird projects, to the English 10 and 12 Honors Macbeth and Othello performances. It’s a daunting undertaking considering the frequency of deadlines and the massive amount of content to cover.

This year’s Portfolio will be the first LWA yearbook to be printed entirely in color! As evidenced by my exclamation point, we are incredibly excited to have a full-color book. Though a seemingly trivial aesthetic preference, this allows the staff to be significantly more experimental and creative in design. We can now play with selective coloring and more intricate graphic designs. A colorful school year warrants a vibrant book.

In terms of organization and marketing schemes, the 2012 edition of The Portfolio is nothing short of revolutionary. The staff members are different, the organizational structure revamped. This switch yields a streamlined trio of editors and two multitalented consultants. Randi Pellett and Michelle Gold serve as mentors in the yearbook class, offering support, guidance and feedback on layout and text styles. Pellett organizes the business component, designing advertisements and marketing strategies that are proving quite successful. Gold, a Photoshop guru, primarily helps with the photographic elements. Both teachers are also excellent proofreaders and technological whizzes.

Being a Portfolio staff member is a massive commitment, comprising a period of each staffer’s schedule every day. Melissa Ellowitz, a yearbook veteran and this year’s editor-in-chief, works hard to ensure the best possible product. “Our staff not only works within the confines of our forty-five minute class; we are always working, thinking and creating new things for our beautiful book.”

And it truly will be a beautiful book. The yearbook reflects a fixed period of exciting memories made timeless through print. The book crystallizes many defining moments of our academic careers through striking photography and crisp text. “Yearbook is forever. It allows us to look at who we were and who we’ve grown to be,” says Ellowitz.

The book is a means of evoking nostalgia, allowing us to reflect on the bonds we’ve built in and out of the classroom. The product and the experience both hold great value, and the experience only enhances the product’s impact.