value of yearbooks

A blog that I read, the Unclutterer, had a fun post about keeping old yearbooks. There are some nice points in the comments about the value that people find in old yearbooks over the years.
Unclutterer's view of old yearbooks

Another good place to browse around and see why old yearbooks are cool: a local bookstore in Marysville, WA, that has collected over 6,500 yearbooks: Third Street Books

Photoshop Tools

Here is a collection of some photoshop tips on the web.

Click here to Learn Photoshop in One Week
I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds tempting! A collection of tutorial videos, from the interface, to the Type tool, to shortcuts, to tips and tricks!

Check out the
Tourist Remover
This just sounds funny. Take a series of photos of the same thing and this site, for free, will stitch them together without the annoying extra tourist wandering through the frame. Maybe use it to create a cleaner photo-illustration of an event?
Here's a link to do it yourself in Photoshop.

Click here for info on
Making Photos Look Cool and Historical
Again, just a fun tip to create photo illustrations.

Here's a very good tip: click here to learn how to correctly use UnSharp Mask
This can help sharpen digital photos, but only if you do it the right way!

journalism day

Herff Jones//Sound Yearbooks Presents ...
Fall WJEA Workshop
September 19
University of Washington
Featured Speaker: Barb Page Award winning Adviser and yearbook guru.

Make sure you save the date for the Fall JEA Workshop. If you are interested in improving your yearbook, JEA is the way to do it! Every year Herff Jones partners with Washington JEA to bring you a phenomenal day of yearbook presentations and discussions. Barb Page will be the main session speaker. Barb is an experienced adviser who knows what it takes to lead a yearbook program. In addition to Barb's main session there will be sessions such as...

"Designing with Type" spicing up headlines and typography on your pages.

"Column Design" How to implement column design into your book.

"Yearbook Themes and Covers" How to carry a theme from the beginning to the end of the book (I present this one!).

Click here to download the registration flyer and send in to register for this great day. Also, you can go to www.wjea.net for more information. JEA is the Journalism Education Association. JEA is the organization you need to be a part of if you want help in building a great yearbook program. Go to www.jea.org and see all the resources that jea offers you.

Let me know if you're going to be there!

you're invited!

Come join us at Auburn Riverside High School, the Saturday after next, from 9am-2pm. We'll share ideas on having a successful start to the year, how to use eDesign, and ideas on being a great (or at least less-stressed) new adviser!
RSVP to me if you would like to come!

edesign help tips

The tutorials on eDesign are such great resources! If you are using this new page design program, be sure to check out the HELP menu, and watch the tutorials to get a great start. These would be good lessons to show to the class at the start of the year, as well.

theme

School is starting, and one of your first duties has to do with choosing a theme!

Theme selection is one of those tasks that is fun for some and a chore for others. The challenge is always trying to come up with a new, fresh idea that really represents the students at your school. To that end, here are a few helpful hints:
Start on the Herff Jones Resources page.

There are a number of theme resources there including lesson plans that teach what a theme is and a list of themes to either choose from or help generate ideas.
Try to avoid the overtired, overused, overworked themes.

Especially those that have to do with movies, TV, and music. And by all means run screaming from the room if anyone on your staff suggests the idea of each headline in the book being the name of a TV show, movie, or song. This is a guaranteed one way ticket to insanity for a yearbook adviser.

Have a scavenger hunt.

For homework this week have every staff member search through magazines, junk mail, college recruiting materials, and the mall for theme ideas. They can look at verbal phrases and graphic ideas. Have them bring their favorites to share with the class.

Try Wordle.net.

An important note about Wordle.net. This can be a fun place to go to create your word cloud, but please be advised that some of the word clouds saved to the Wordle gallery are NOT appropriate for students. The latest created word clouds also appear randomly on the home page, so please be aware that unsuitable content could show up there as well. You can link directly to the CREATE page. That page and your results page will only display safe content. Wordle may be blocked by your school filters because of this as well. The site creator is searching for ways to make this neat tool more teacher friendly.

This could be a blast. Send out staffers to interview people in your school. Ask them questions like:

* What is the best thing about our school?
* What do people say about our students?
* Describe our school in three words.

Obviously you want to focus on the more positive and serious responses that you get.

Type all the responses (NOT the questions) as a big old text file in a word processing program. Then copy the block of text into Wordle.net to create your very own word cloud of the responses.

At the top of this post is a word cloud created from this article.


What can you do with this, you ask? First of all the words that are repeated most in the answers will be the largest in the cloud. You can use those words as jumping off points for a theme. The largest word could simply BE your theme. OR Maybe you could use the word cloud AS your theme for this year. It would be a graphic theme and you could pull specific words from the cloud to title your sections. If you want to do something like that and are planning to use the cloud as artwork, be sure to print your word cloud to show me. Our art department will be able to reproduce the artwork in a quality that can be used on a yearbook cover.

Be sure to leave a comment if you have questions.