After entering and winning last year’s yearbook competition, I decided to participate again this year together with Milo. Last year, our design was chosen to be on the yearbook cover, and since this is our last year, we thought it would be great if our design would be chosen again this year. Last year, the theme was polaroid and we made the following design, with which I was very happy but some thought it was a bit too confusing with the amount of photos. I thought that this was a good way to show what had been happening during the year, but considered the criticism in this year’s planning and design.

Last year’s final cover design. Screenshot from Photoshop.

This year’s theme was vintage:

We started by brainstorming and sketching ideas independently, so that we could chose and refine a large selection later. I didn’t want to have a stereotypical vintage photo book-like look, although that was the first idea I got.

This was my first idea. The text should say 2019-20.

The above design is not very original I find, so I continued brainstorming and sketching. I came up with another idea that was a bit different, focusing more on classic photography film and a blackboard. I finalized two draft designs, one with the blackboard and the second with my initial idea. I did not add in photos so far (or only few) as I wanted to add more photos from later in the year.

I am happy particularly with the blackboard design, as I think the effect of a greyish/ black background will look good with colorful photos. I also had the idea of converting some photos to B&W to emphasize the vintage theme. If my design would be chosen, I would update it with photos from events like Food&Fun fair, etc. The designs were a good opportunity for me again to be creative, as well as working with Photoshop, which was nice as I have little experience with the software. I think it is quite hard to come up with an idea in response to a prompt, so I was glad to use this opportunity.