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I was one of the editors of my own high school yearbook. Back then, we laboriously developed film, hand cropped, scanned, and edited using simple software, under the direction of a big yearbook company representative. This person would pop in from time to time, just often enough to keep us from spending all of the petty cash on junk food and sneaking into offices during after-hours. Back then, the representative seemed to be an essential part of creating and publishing our yearbook.
When I signed on to advise the yearbook as a teacher, I was surprised to find out that not much had changed in that capacity. There were still only a few big companies out there competing for their chance to represent each school. For my first 2 years as adviser we worked with a representative who visited the school twice a year to make sure things were going smoothly. The yearbook was created using an online editing software that was difficult to use and had no real world application for the students learning how to use it. The yearbooks were expensive, deadlines were unreasonable, and we were paying for services that we were more than capable of producing ourselves. When our contract was up I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. With my graphic design background, I knew it would be a manageable task to design the books in-house without requiring special yearbook specific software. I also knew how to handle printing and creating deadlines that time-managed efficiently. I set out space in my graphic design curriculum to teach the students Adobe InDesign (which we would have covered anyway) We decided on a theme, learned about photography and a whole mess of design skills, and set out to create the book. In the end, we achieved the following: Less expensive book - This is huge, being that we are such a small school. We were able to get out of our yearbook debt due to not having to pay a company what we could do ourselves. NO ADS!! - We didn't have to sell 'em. That's huge. Same printing quality - The yearbook company tries to tell you that their printing process is better. We chose to print digitally, with the same print quality as the previous company produced (digitally printed) yearbook. No Quantity Minimums - We purchased as many books as needed. They arrived 2 weeks after we put the order in. More control over printing - Not only was the quality matched, but we could actually PROOF the printing quality including color. No Deadlines! - Yes, I created my own, but I was able to get the Spring sports and Spring theatre production in there which is really important to those graduating seniors. More Creative Control - We weren't stuck using templates, which to me, was the easiest way to navigate the editing software that the company had us use. Applicable Skills - The students used editing software that they might actually use in the real world. We created a great looking book with less effort, less buck, and less headache. Why aren't more schools doing this? I will say, through this experience...Adobe really should think about adding a photo organization option into indesign. It would be great to be able to organize which photos were used in a document. Maybe they do already? Enlighten me.... This week I was lucky to take a trip back to Providence. If you're ever feeling uninspired, just spend a few hours in this city. It is one of the most refreshingly interesting places I've spent time in. As an art teacher, the resources there are unbeatable. Every time I go, I make sure to stop at the RI Recycle for Education warehouse. This is a design instructor's dream. Barrels of raw materials waiting to be turned into a meaningful lesson. This Fall I went to the Makers Fair in Queens with a group of coworkers to prepare for a Makerspace program being piloted in our elementary school. While the Maker movement is mainly a technological extension of the DIY moment, I was mostly inspired by the un-techy objects.
There were thousands of cool creations waiting to be turned into high school art and design lessons. A challenge I keep coming back to in my design course is how to encourage creative solutions that the students actually get to create. Often times, the materials and facilities we offer can be limiting. I continue to work on molding the assignments to enable creative freedom along with the whole package of completing a design from concept to prototype. How do you work beyond the limitations of a school classroom to help the students "make" more? |
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