Design

Design plays a big part in everything I do for both yearbook and online publications. From creating yearbook spreads to social media posts and infographics, I have learned my way around Canva, Herff Jones and Walsworth over the past three years. Since I was a sophomore, I have learned a lot about design and what elements draw viewers in. I have progressed tremendously over time and made dozens of templates to create cohesion in the yearbook as well as on various social media pages.

Yearbook Spreads

As a staff member, Social Media Editor and Editor-In-Chief, I have designed dozens of spreads for the Wahawk Yearbook. Specializing in sports, 90% of the pictures I use for my spreads are taken by myself or my fellow staff members.

With the leadership roles I have been given, my main priority is to cover as many people as I can on a page. Who doesn't get featured a lot? Who is featured on every page already? With over 1800 students at West High, it means a lot to us that we cover everyone.

Softball spread created for the 2022-23 yearbook, 'Dear Wahawks.' The goal of this spread was to highlight a team that often goes unrecognized since they are a summer sport.
On this specific spread, one of the main theme elements I used was the magazine letters that you can see on 'Signing Off' which highlights seniors who committed to play softball in college.

Senior Superlative spread created for the 2022-23 yearbook, 'Dear Wahawks.' The goal of this spread was to feature seniors in the class of 2023.
My main theme element for this spread was the cutout pictures of each senior. We had some seniors not attend the original photoshoot so cutout photos made it easier to edit students together.

Same Desk, Different Student spread created for the 2022-23 yearbook, 'Dear Wahawks.' The goal of this spread was to show the personalities of six different students who share the same desk throughout the day.
The main theme element used for this spread was the ripped paper and tape throughout the spread. Our 'Dear Wahawks' theme was meant to be a letter or journal for students which connects to our scrapbook elements.

Graduation spread created for the 2022-23 yearbook, 'Dear Wahawks.' This spread features seniors in the class of 2023 as they cross the stage, closing their high school careers.
The graduation page connects to our yearbook theme with the cutout image on the bottom right side. The spread otherwise strays from the theme to let it stand out and represent the achievement.

Boys Wrestling spread created for the 2022-23 yearbook, 'Dear Wahawks.' In previous years, the boys have shared a spread with the female wrestlers, this was the first spread in my time on yearbook that only featured the boys team.
This spread has multiple elements connecting to the theme, specifically the cutout elements where the picture is only partially cut out.

Fall Cheer spread created for the 2023-24 yearbook, 'This Is Us.' The goal of this spread was to share the accomplishments of our cheer team during their first season of the year.
A major element of the "This Is Us' theme is straight lines for a very clean and modern look that contrasts our previous books. Another element is color blocking and boxes outlining certain parts of the spread such as the Ashley Gomez feature and the focal stunt image.

Staff v Senior Basketball spread created for the 2023-24 yearbook, 'This Is Us.' The goal of this spread was to show the newly created tradition of students competing against staff members in a basketball game. Specific elements in this page that connect to the theme of the book include the black and white backgrounds on certain images as well as the color blocking lines behind the text and images.

Print Spreads

While the Wahawk Insider only started my junior year, we planned a print magazine during the first quarter of my senior year. Working on a print spread was similar to working on the yearbook but also came with additional challenges. Bringing a magazine to West High was an exciting experience despite the anxiety that came with it. We were so hopeful that everything would turn out perfectly, but as with any publication, we knew there would be flaws. For the first issue, I was assigned to write the cover story which would be two spreads as well as a magazine exclusive. Being able to craft such a special story was so exciting, keeping it a secret made it even more fun to do.

'The Prophecy' features senior Keegan Nystrom after he fulfilled his promise that the Wahawks would not lose to the East High Trojans in a football game during his high school career.

'Victory 11' talks about the eleventh win the Wahawks claimed over the East High Trojans. The rival game is famous in Waterloo for being filled with emotion and passion.

'Finding Comfort Behind The Camera' is the print version of my award winning article that features senior Talan Nelson and his passion for photography and videography.

'Brewing Success' is the print version of my award winning article that features junior Bailey Kestel and how she created a coffee shop at the Waterloo Career Center.

'Girls In The Stands' is a collaborative article I wrote with Lucy Prescott after multiple boys in our student section attempted to push girls out of the stands, or move them to the back rows. This article included a photo shoot that we did with multiple female volunteers from West High including Hannah Connor, a very passionate female student who deserved to be recognized for her school spirit and love for the Wahawk athletics.

Social Media

As a junior, I ran Instagram accounts for the Yearbook and Wahawk Insider. This position allowed me to design templates and posts for both accounts as well as work with my time management to post events and news in a timely manner. My talent and consistency with social media were seen by other programs and sports, such as the softball team who reached out to me to help design posts for their Instagram account for their 2023 season. I helped the softball team create templates for their game days and senior shout outs. I was also their primary photographer for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. As a senior cheerleader, I brought back our social media presence by posting more on our Instagram.

Over time, I have noticed patterns of what people enjoy seeing on their feeds. Students want sports over the news, vibrant colors that stand out over dull and gray colors, but most importantly they want to see themselves and their friends represented.

Web Design

With many of my articles for the Wahawk Insider, I create images to include within the piece or create my own feature photo. I use similar patterns as I do with social media here, using bright colors and trying to include people rather than graphics when I can.

Design Process

To maintain a cohesive design throughout our yearbook and on our social media platforms, we have checklists and templates for staff members and editors to follow. For yearbook, this ensures that each page has similar elements. One thing we always say is that we should be able to rip multiple pages out of the yearbook and still tell it was from the same book.

This is the design guide for the 2023-24 yearbook, 'This Is Us.' After the design editor and I decided on requirements for each spread as well as decided on fonts and colors, we created this as a way for staff members to know exactly what their spread should look like. This also makes it easier for editors to check spreads when they are finished as we all know what font and size everything should be.

This is the spread checklist that is digitally available as well as printed on every desktop in our classroom. These are all requirements for every page and include quotes, different verbal and design elements for the book and color restrictions.

This goes over one of our major design elements for the 'This Is Us' book. It is required for each spread to have one or more black and white elements, but also to have color incorporated around it.

This is our color palette for the 'This Is Us' book. While our colors are preset into the system, we do encourage students to color match to the theme of the page if possible and try to stay away from sport pages being primarily old rose which is our school color.

Having three years of experience and being a slight perfectionist means I am constantly trying to find ways to improve not only other spreads, but my own. Doing this means I typically restart or change my spreads over a dozen times before I am ready to submit them. I go to a school that has an endless amount of beautiful stories to tell, and I have the honor of sharing them. It is my biggest goal to share these stories in a way that I would want my own to be shared.

My favorite sport to cover at West High is softball. Not only was my best friend the captain, but those girls are the kindest athletes at West High. For a sport that often goes unappreciated, the girls have such good spirits, energy, patience and gratitude for everyone who supports them. Each year, they have a story to tell and they allow me to tell it. I owe it to them and every other student at West High to do their story justice.

Inspiration

As a journalist and designer, inspiration can hit me anywhere and everywhere, which is why I am never to far away from my phone, laptop, paper or even just a marker to scribble on my hand. From sticky notes across our walls, to pictures in our phones and Pinterest boards, so many members of the staff find inspiration to share with one another.

Our trip to Chicago for a summer yearbook workshop was beautiful, and exposed us to so much art that we all had our phones out the entire time, photographing everything we possibly could and yelling to one another "Look at this!" or "This would be such a cool idea on a spread!" While on the trip, I took pictures of lots of things, but especially colors that I thought would look good in our 2023-24 yearbook. I also fell in love with the idea of color blocking (left image) which pushed me to add this to my design board. We inevitably ended with color blocking being a required element in the book.

Over the last three years, Mariah Slater and I have added photos to a shared album that sparked creativity in us or that we wanted to add to our program. Though throughout the years some of the photos have been deleted, we still look back on different color palettes, fonts and layouts.

Once we decided our theme for the 2023-24 yearbook, it was time to plan elements, colors and create guidelines for the staff members to follow. Although we had a good idea on certain elements we knew we wanted in the book, some of the editors did not always see eye-to-eye in other categories.

For example, my vision included pastel colors, as well as transparent color blocking to create overlapping colors. On the other hand, other editors saw darker colors and cutout images as the leading visuals of the book.

In the end we all decided on having cutout images with black and white backgrounds and having color blocking and lines to contrast with different elements on each page. We also really wanted some form of 'This is' visible on every page.

We create these templates to get all of our ideas on one page. This allows us to not only decide what we truly want by trial and error, but gives us the chance to show others our visions and share why we are advocating for certain design choices to make it into the book.