First Deadline: Hard Work x1000

Hey guys! Man, November has been such a busy month. Like, the busiest month in yearbook so far. Our first deadline was yesterday, November 18th. Unfortunately not everything has gone smoothly, so we're racing to get everything turned in. Even if we are a few days late, it's important to remember that everything has to be good quality and not just a bunch of photos and text thrown together. It's the content that has to be fine-combed to perfection. Despite some setbacks on deadline, we only have a few pages left to turn in! My mentor Mimi Orth also visited today and look at everything we had. She was quite impressed with how things we're coming out, so that's awesome. It's great to get feedback and advice from some one who's an expert at design and publication. Anyways, my goal is to get all of the first deadline spreads to be turned in before Thanksgiving Break.

Also, to give you guys the gist of how much work these spreads are: the design team and myself have spent 4 out of 5 days of our weeks cooped up in Strand's back corner, going almost blind from staring at the screens so often. ...Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit, but it is a huge time commitment and it's so worth it when we look at the final pages.

May be unrelated, but we reorganized our little "cave" in the back corner. We have a bunch of yearbooks from other schools to get inspiration from (no, we do not steal ideas :P).

The proof file of our cover. A proof file is a file that the printing company sends back a few weeks after you turn in the original file. It's how our printing company, Herff Jones, says, "Is this really how you want this to look?"

The cover is by far my favorite part of the book that we've worked on. I think it really exemplifies iPoly's little "moments."

The ladder. A ladder is like a calendar/planner hybrid. It just shows where pages go in order in the yearbook.

I spent a full day helping design editor Mira and copy editor Posada collaborate on a spread, called a division. A division is like a mini-table-of-contents in certain sections of the yearbook. We decided on doing a fun little story on a few select seniors (they may know who they are...).

On a final note, I will hopefully finish up my independent component before January! And don't forget to keep Instagram-ing your photos to go into the yearbook!