WELCOME!

The photo above is the yearbook cover for this year. The students loved the idea of SECURE as a theme. It is a classic theme for Christians, as we are always secure in Christ. However with this year being the first year with a full-time security officer, we felt like the theme was doubly applicable. When students began discussing and brainstorming visual elements to the theme, they thought initially of locks. This was a great start, but they found very quickly that a lock is a fairly boring icon without context. So they soon began thinking of a lockscreen on a cell phone. The editors were very conscious that their book had an audience of 6-12 graders which is a wide range. They did not want to shame any students without cell phones, so they proceeded with great intentionality to not aggrandize cell phones or social media.

One of the things they wanted to make sure they did was not make the cell phone "cutesy." They wanted to go with a more beautiful, sketchy aesthetic that seemed mature rather than flashy. They thought this choice would perhaps make the cell phone seem like for older kids rather than young students. In our yearbook software, there was a lot of cartoonish looking cellphone iconography: devices, apps, text bubbles, etc. However, all iconography in our book was painstakingly created by the Design Editor, Mallory Terrell, to ensure that it matched their desired aesthetic and did not infantilize cell phones. She used linoleum blocks to carve out the images, inked and stamped them onto paper, then scanned them into Photoshop to digitize her personalized images. This was a labor of love to the student body.

This photo is the Table of Contents. Although our students wanted to maintain the visual element of security with a cell phone, they also did not want to glorify the cell phone. So in places like this one, they opted for a graphic that was easily identifiable as related to a cell phone but that everyone would recognize even if they did not have a cell phone. They did this so that readers without cell phones would not feel ostracized. They thought a Google search bar was the perfect marriage of techy but not venerating social media.

The above page is one of two of the section divider pages. Each section divider was based on a real cell phone app. However, the editors took time to carefully choose which apps to choose. The students did not want to encourage social media usage, so they mostly chose apps that were either school related or did not have the typical social media platforms (such as the Spotify one above).

The above page is another section divider page. Each section divider was based on a real cell phone app. However, the editors took time to carefully choose which apps to choose. The students did not want to encourage social media usage, so they mostly chose apps that were either school related (like the Google Classroom one above) or did not have the typical social media platforms.

Above is an example of another step the students went through to make sure that the yearbook would not encourage social media use. The editors came up with the idea to explicitly handle the dangers of social media use. In the photo above you will see that the yearbook staffers did an all-school survey asking how students stayed accountable online. The editors went through the results and chose a wide variety of responses so that their readers would see all the different ways their peers were trying to be safe online. On the left side, the layout is a compilation of responses from across the student body. On the right side, you'll see we did a comparison survey of middle school and high school results. Showcasing the differences of the two grade levels, this graph highlights just how many other students are using precautions online. They wanted to remind people that they aren't alone in using safety precautions; to normalize things like avoiding social media use, charging your phone outside of your room, and putting time restrictions on your phone usage.

Above you will see six icons that represent the fictitious apps that the Design Editor created for each of our section dividers. The editors went through a brainstorming session considering using real apps. It is trendy right now to do yearbook themes based on Spotify, Nexflix, even Roku. They were tempted and inspired by some of these yearbooks, but the editors did not want to encourage the use of any real apps.