This year’s yearbook staff is in the process of making a memorable book that celebrates not only this exciting and current year, but also achievements throughout school history to celebrate Stone Bridge’s 25th anniversary.
To give students a product that the staff feels confident in, yearbook students started work on this edition as early as last year. Over this past summer, a few staff members attended Walsworth’s yearbook summer camp, which is hosted at James Madison University. Throughout the three days that Yearbook teacher Leah Onderdonk and her students were at the camp, they were able to prepare for the school year by accomplishing various timely tasks.
“[At camp] this year, we came up with the theme for this year’s book,” Ms. Onderdonk said.“We came up with our visual elements for the book, and we actually designed our cover, all in those three days.”
When deciding a theme, the yearbook team needed to think about what type of message they want to convey this year. Since it’s the 25th anniversary of the school, it was important to not only celebrate this school year, but also the memorable experiences of the past.
“We chose [the theme] because it does have to do with bridging the past and the present,” Ms. Onderdonk said. “It has to do with the 25th anniversary and kind of celebrating our past while embracing who we are now as Bulldogs.”
In yearbook, when creating themes, visuals elements, and headlines, the team looks at a master spreadsheet to make sure the new theme is one that hasn’t been used in past yearbooks. Since the goal is to reflect on the past 25 years, the yearbook team is walking a fine line between the past and present by pulling together elements from old yearbooks on this rendition.
“My favorite part about this theme is really looking through all the past yearbooks and seeing how life at Stone Bridge was throughout the years,” Editor in Chief Julia Goodfriend said. “A big part of the book this year is using subtle parts of the O.G. book in this year’s book, such as headlines.”
The yearbook team has already put a lot of effort into creating the 2024-25 yearbook while trying to reflect on past years of Stone Bridge. Designing the spread is a very meticulous task that requires members to put in a lot of thought to continue the theme throughout each spread.
“I enjoyed playing with the layout on each spread,” Goodfriend said. “Last year was such a fun book that we wanted to go the complete opposite route and make this year’s book super clean looking. It is really satisfying to see the final product of the layout. Creating it is like a really difficult puzzle.”
As the release of the yearbook draws closer by the week, be on the lookout for the official theme to be revealed sometime in the second semester.
“I really like the colors and the visual element, which I don’t want to spoil anything,” Onderdonk said. “We’ll do a big cover and theme reveal later on in the year.”
