For my son's 5th grade year, I volunteered to be the yearbook chair. There were many unexpected challenges that came along with the project.
The yearbook ended up at 128 pages including individual classes, staff, awards, clubs, field trip, and PTA events, as well as parent designed dedications and ads and a few "blank" pages for signatures. I designed the cover and interior art including page backgrounds and decorative "sticker" elements. The interior fonts were chosen for their playfulness and readability. I also copy wrote and edited letters to the students, award, club and event descriptions.
This bloomed into designing the front and back of their t-shirt and other gifts as well. I remember my 5th grade tshirt featuring the year we graduated with all of our signatures inside the numbers and wanted that for my son's class as well. I went into the school over 3 days and had each kiddo sign their name inside the "23" of their graduating year on my iPad Pro with my Apple Pencil. I only missed 2 kids over those 3 days and their teachers were able to get me a photo of their signatures so I was able to trace and then place their signatures so they wouldn't be left out.
Since the 5th Grade Comittee had extra funds they were able to get a few extra gifts for the kids. Upon request, I made a circluar version of the shirt/cover design for a sticker for waterbottle and the design even wound up on a towel for the kiddos.
This school year long volunteer project was more work than I had anticipated. I found myself filling in as portrait photographer for students that moved to the school after the official picture day and editing matching backgrounds in Adobe Photoshop. I was an unexpected photographer at many school events inclding field trips and PTA events. I had many people volunteer to help and then never actually make any time to help. I had other volunteers that edited finished, approved pages that had to be restored to their previous layouts as well. With all the outside chaos that accompanied the actual design and layout, I would do it again in a heartbeat and hope to be able to build my daughter's 5th grade yearbook when the time comes.
This continues to be one of my favorite projects I have had the honor of working on in a very long time.
When viewing the images of the project, please keep in mind that while the school had permission from all people featured in the yearbook for their photos to be reproduced, I do not. I have taken the proactive step to blur out any identifying images and names to protect their privacy.
