The yearbook is a collection of various unforgettable moments from the previous year. If you were to open up a Hutchison School yearbook, the moments you would naturally see are days like the first day of school, Black and Gold Day, the school plays, Halloween, Christmas, May Day, and many more. The yearbook also includes photos of the students from each division, along with each grade’s and division’s best moments.

“For me, the things that stick out the most between old yearbooks and Instagram or Facebook posts from the school are when the girls are learning something new,” Cyndie Trice, Graphic Design teacher and yearbook advisor, said. “Looking back at the senior quotes or senior anecdotes from last year’s class […] there were at least ten of them who mentioned their 7th grade trip to Dauphin Island […] trying to anticipate those moments are the most special for me.”

About two months into each school year, the students are expected to receive a yearbook from the previous year. The staff behind the yearbook, spent the year capturing every memorable moment they can. However, towards the end of the 2019-2020 school year, capturing the last few moments were difficult, as the rise of COVID-19 caused the school to close down.

“Part of the design process for the yearbook is that we create the templates for the pages before we fill in the content,” Ms. Trice said. “They were not as suitable for home footage, especially iPhone pictures that were vertical.”

Additionally, Ms. Trice continues to say that she and her team had to rearrange the layouts to accommodate the types of images they were going to get. Half of the footage her team received was footage from parents or from students at home, and zoom classes. 

“It was a rough transition, but it looked pretty,” Ms. Trice said, “And you’ll see it soon. It should be arriving in the next couple of weeks.”

Even though Ms. Trice claims that the end of last year was difficult for capturing the big events, the girls at the yearbook team were able to improvise. Ms. Trice said that the girls did their best to come up with alternatives to finish up the yearbook. For example, they weren’t able to capture the Graduation Ceremony, so they decided to take the seniors’ photos in front of a green screen so they could place them on the alter in the church together. Planning ahead this year gives the yearbook team an opportunity to take pictures early and expand on their creativity.

“Overall, it’s just that we have the time to make a memory that we can capture,” Ms. Trice said.

Concerning this year’s yearbook, Ms. Trice said that the yearbook staff has already captured a good amount of the first quarter. Furthermore, they are still talking to each division head, grade levels, activity sponsors, coaches and captains of sports teams to try and keep track of the events that will be happening throughout the year. Even though there might be some chances certain events won’t happen, the yearbook staff has kept things flexible, so any event will fit in nicely within the yearbook.

“Being able to prepare for a lot of that has been helpful,” Ms. Trice said.

Before the school year, the editors in the yearbook staff make sure that preparations are made in the summer. This year, there are about four editors in the yearbook staff, each with a specific job. There’s the editor in chief, two of the editors are in charge of design, and there’s one editor of commerce, and they all work together to brainstorm themes for the yearbook and how to apply the theme to different divisions and events.

“The last few weeks [of the summer] came to them [the editors] building their ideas,” Ms. Trice said. “The program they would use, which is the book’s company, that does the printing, they have an online version of what basically is InDesign. They have been building their concepts, their visions they have for the pages, the thoughts they want to use […] they have been building into that program.”

Along with brainstorming for the theme of the yearbook, Ms. Trice has said that picture day is to be expected in February, instead of having students and faculty taking a picture of themselves.

“We are planning to have it in the same level of COVID restrictions,” she said. “Taking pictures is not ideal, but it is the last resort […] the portraits are I’ll say the 50% of the importance […] After many years, that’s the struggle, to remember people’s faces.  We like the other stuff, but having portraits are definitely the most important things in the long run.”

The 2019-2020 yearbook is to be expected in a couple of weeks from now, and based on what Ms. Trice has said about the yearbook and its process, it definitely makes it all more exciting. “To me, as a designer, as an artist, being able to capture a lot of those unique moments mean a lot more to me, and I think in the long run it’ll be more memorable and more impactful for, say if you looked at the yearbook in ten years or twenty years.”