The Yearbook Blog

We always knew yearbooks are better, but it’s nice to see that other people think so, too! Here’s an excerpt from the article “Luv U 4ever!” by Jay Hamburg:

High school yearbooks have survived with a very strange recipe that hasn’t changed much over the decades. That recipe starts with the idea that your school contains the brightest scholars or finest athletes. Or both. Next, it puts the grandest decrees about the future alongside the silliest sayings about study hall. Toss in some photos, a bit of verse, awful puns, local ads. Then charge a hefty fee and encourage buyers to scrawl all over their new merchandise.

It’s like working nine months to build a splendid monument in the hopes it will last forever and that people will tag it with graffiti at the unveiling.

Somehow, it works.

While newspapers and magazines struggle for breath, trying to keep up with Twitter and Facebook, one of the slowest, most static and least portable of periodicals—the lumbering yearbook—just keeps plodding along.

Granted, some colleges have dropped their yearbooks and some high school annuals are declining in popularity as electronic distractions grab attention and yearbook prices top $80. But many Central Florida high schools say their sales remain steady, even in a slow economy.

Apopka High student Shana Rhodes says she and her friends enjoy social networking sites in cyberspace, but she wanted to work on the Darter yearbook precisely because it marks their rite of passage with a tangible record.

“Twitter will go away,” says Shana, 18. “But a yearbook will never perish.”

Maybe that’s part of its ongoing appeal. Lift some of today’s 400-page volumes and you sense that those hardbound, five-pound tomes will endure even as memories fade. They’ll still be around long after hard drives crash and one technology displaces another.

You can’t use big floppy disks from the 1980s with today’s computers. But you still can open up the 1924 Echo yearbook of Orlando High School and hear the Therons, Thelmas, Ottos and Lotties issue a verdict meant to distinguish themselves forever: “It is doubtful if the fair city of Orlando will ever again witness such a brilliant, generous and all-around good class.”

You’re the best!

Nowadays the yearbook boasting tends to be more…

Click here to read the complete article at OrlandoMagazine.com.

Dan Miller of the Nashville News wrote this article about a study of yearbook photos and smiling. I’ve pasted the article below, but if you want to read the original, click here.

“The other day a friend mentioned to me some provocative research he heard discussed concerning high school yearbook photos.

“Apparently the study concluded that people who had been smiling in their yearbook photos were happier, more contented people 30 or 40 years later, when compared to those who weren’t smiling. The researchers also used some method to determine whether the smile was a big, genuine smile, or a “forced smile” like the one on the nerdy guy shown here.

“I went online trying to locate that research…. and while I couldn’t track down that particular study, I did find some compelling facts about smiling.

“For example, researchers somewhere studied more than 16,000 photos of students from kindergarten to college and discovered that girls and women smile more frequently than boys or men. This didn’t surprise me…. but, just for the record, I went back through my personal high school and college yearbooks and did a quick count of smiling faces.

“Sure enough… they were right… the number of smiling young women was far greater than the smiling young men. Of course the girls had reason to smile. Most of them had fresh, attractive faces, whereas many of the guys looked like the doofus pictured here. Here was another interesting part…. up until about the 4th grade, boys and girls smiled about equally…. but then, at around age 9 or 10, the girls started smiling more than the boys, a pattern that continued right into adulthood.

“Part of the reason, I suppose, is that when you’re about to have your picture made, you have to make a quick decision whether to smile or not smile. Girls just naturally seem to want a pretty smile, while boys seem to prefer the angst-filled persona of a James Dean or Marlon Brando…. hoping to avoid forever being haunted by the toothy grin of a Wayne Newton-style publicity shot.

“Or it could be because photographers will often ask their subjects to practice smiling. No self-respecting guy likes to admit he’s gonna stand in front of the mirror practicing his smile.
But based on personal observations of my sisters and daughters, it seems to me that young girls can often spend hours at the mirror practicing — not only how to smile — but the proper angle to hold their heads while smiling.

“So the bottom line here for young people is… when you get your yearbook photo taken, smile…. it’ll pay big dividends in happiness somewhere far down the road. And make it a big, genuine smile… not the halfhearted variety like the dork pictured next to this column. I’ll close with a nice little thought about smiling, from an anonymous writer, that I happened across on the internet:

“A smile costs nothing, but gives so much.
It enriches those who receive, without making poorer those who give.
It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
None is so rich or mighty that he can get along without it, and none is so poor but that he can be made rich by it.
A smile creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in business, and is the countersign of friendship.
It brings rest to the weary, cheer to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and it is nature’s best antidote for trouble.
Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away.
Some people are too tired to give you a smile.
Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.”

Here is yet another example of the effect yearbooks have on people’s lives…

After Ron Bogdan, a financial manager at AnswerNet, lost his 1976 high school yearbook in a flood, he “felt an emptiness in his heart he just couldn’t describe.” As he searched for another copy, he ended up finding many other old yearbooks instead. As a result, he has now started a Yearbook “Lost & Found” service for other people searching for their old high school yearbook. To find out more about, read his story at the following link:

http://www.nj.com/news/times/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-16/123614311829960.xml&coll=5

Holly Madison and Dmitry Chaplin dance in the first episode of season eight of "Dancing With the Stars."

Okay, the celebrity is Holly Madison, star of “The Girls Next Door” and “Dancing with the Stars” and the job was “playmate editor” for Playboy Magazine, but still…

Here’s her exact quote from an interview with The Oregonian.

“I used to kind of joke around that I ended up with a job where, I learned this job in high school — everybody, when they’re in high school, goes, ‘What am I ever going to use this for?’ — but I was on the yearbook staff. We used to have to lay out the yearbook on computer, and I never would have been able to jump into that job with no training if I hadn’t been on the yearbook staff.”

Click here to read the full interview.

My “google alert” on yearbook blogs brought this post to my attention. It is written by the spouse of a nationally-award-winning adviser who argues the point that video yearbooks will replace traditional books eventually. It is very well written with some very valid points. You can read the entire post yourself at this link:

http://www.interregnum.amberhorizon.com/tales/?p=63

Here is a summary of some his main points:

• Video yearbooks are free
• Video yearbooks can be easily distributed
• If you lose your video yearbook, you can easily obtain another one

Yes, all of those points are true. However, we have to look at whether a video yearbook can replace ALL of the benefits of a printed yearbook. Since I already explained my point about this in a previous post about Social Network Sites replacing yearbooks, I won’t go into detail again here. You can read the other post by clicking here.

But here are a couple of points I’d like to make in defense of the printed book vs. the video yearbook:

• Everyone in the school is in a printed yearbook. It is not just about capturing highlights of certain events (as in a video yearbook). It’s a reference tool. Printed yearbooks list every student in every grade (and club… and team…). Can you imagine them trying to do that in video format? How boring would that be?
• Video yearbooks do not allow behind the scenes coverage and commentary that printed books do (or at least well-written ones). Just like movies, video yearbooks can only capture what can be seen. That’s why I always prefer the book version over the movie version of the same book. The book always gives additional insight into the thoughts and characters of the story. A printed yearbook can do the same; although not every school takes advantage of this.
• (As the author’s wife points out in his post,) Video yearbooks cannot be autographed. And if you ask most yearbook owners after they graduate, it’s the signatures and messages that are the most sentimental.

As I said in my other post, this kind of panic seems to arrise every time new technology is introduced. See below…

This article was printed in 1930, and I’m pretty sure notebooks are still around.

MY CONCLUSION:

Video yearbooks can’t replace traditional yearbooks. They make great supplements, but they can’t replace them. However, are traditional yearbooks losing sales to video yearbooks? I have no real statistics, but I can guess that yes, they probably are. However, this is because students believe video yearbooks can replace traditional ones, and they are the consumer.

So does the yearbook industry have a problem? Yes. The solution? We need to convince students of the value of a printed yearbook. As a former English teacher, I know that this is just about as difficult as convincing them that the book is better than the movie. But if JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer can do it, so can we! (but without filling our books with witches and vampires)

Do you have an opinion? I’d love to hear it? Leave us a comment below!

In my continued mission to convince yearbook staffs of the larger importance of yearbooks in our society, I am sharing this “feel good” story about a man, a class ring lost 20 years ago, and the yearbook that brought them back together…

http://www.delgazette.com/local.asp?ID=1600&Story=3