Crappy IDEA - Year Book

Year-Book

Watching people look back to their high school and college yearbooks in all these movies and TV Series, we some how developed this craving to have one for our own.
Lets get a quick (not brief) overview of the whole thing & later jot down some important stuff.

Wikipedia Says:
“A yearbook, also known as an annual, is a book to record, highlight, and commemorate the past year of a school or a book published annually. Virtually all American, Australian and Canadian high schools, most colleges and many elementary and middle schools publish yearbooks.”

Compilation
Yearbooks are generally compiled by a student committee, which may or may not be advised by members of the faculty. The committee usually has one or more editors who are responsible for collecting and compiling all of the information to be contained within the book, also deciding the layout and allocation of space for each contributor.

Layout
Refers to the appearance of the pages, and it may include the following elements:

• The Headline: This is a theme that ties the page into the story and draws attention to the reader.

• The Story/Copy: Consists of several paragraphs, capturing the highlights of a specific department, sports season, organization, etc., from the past year. Often, yearbook staff members will either send out surveys/interview students, teachers and others for comments.

• Photographs: Candid shots of students, suitable to the page's topic and theme. Often, editors seek to include a cross-section of the student body (e.g., classes, races, school involvement, etc.). Included with the photographs are one or more captions, which describe each picture; these often begin with a lead-in.

Normally each student will have an individual photo of them accompanied by their name and perhaps one or two lines of text. Student's photographs are often accompanied by text about their accomplishments throughout the college, and their future plans (if known). Frequently, seniors are polled to nominate their classmates for "superlatives" or "class celebrities" (such as "most likely to succeed," "most athletic," "most spirited" and "class clown"), are often published in the senior section. Some private schools and smaller high schools set aside an entire page for each senior. These pages are sometimes designed by the seniors themselves, with each senior submitting a digital or physical version of the page he or she would like featured in the book.

Student Life
Several pages are often used for pages chronicling activities undertaken by students, such as trips abroad (eh!! what's that?), activity trips, sporting and other special events. These pages often consist of photo-journals displayed with or without captions.
Sometimes members of a yearbook write editorial and journalistic content about life as a student, current events (local, national and international) and other matters of interest to the peer group.

Advertising pages
Many yearbooks gain revenue by including a section of ads from local businesses.
Some schools sell advertisements for seniors. Parents, other family members and friends use these ads to congratulate a senior — or group of seniors — for their accomplishments.

Distribution
Often, yearbooks are distributed at the end of a school year to allow members to obtain the books and signatures/personal messages from classmates.

Digital yearbooks
A digital yearbook is a yearbook holding memories of a given time with a given group of people. A digital yearbook contains text, images, audio, and video. While a traditional paper yearbook may contain a few dozen pages, a digital yearbook can contain hundreds or even thousands of pages. The end product of a digital yearbook is either a CD-ROM or a DVD.

SNAPSHOTS (University of Michigan)

pp222-223 & pp26-27

(Index & Advertisements) pp372-373 & pp16-17

Q. So? [silence] What's the catch??
A. Lets see how many of us need such a book to show it to their siblings or kids, later in their life. Well a couple of decades down the line, who wouldn't want to look back?? How about bringing peace to your mind [after looking at it] when one day, talking to an old friend, you weren't been able to recollect a face or remember a name [of a batch mate or a faculty]? Or just to see the change(s) happened to you.

Q. How is that any different from the college's official annual magazine?
A. Come on! You really need an answer to that? It doesn't have a snap of each one of us. Well seriously it'll have loads of pictures of the students, our lush green campus, and what not. All in a fashion we ever thought (or even if didn't).

Q. Who'll do this job?
A. Well as suggested, a group or a committee informally or otherwise would be made with or without a convener. If the “one”-publishing-the-annual-magazine finds the idea a) 'worth it' & then b) feasible & then c) is willing to (& can [well you can say... 'the administration', 'R&D' and 'spare-time' required]) do it...... YAHOO! This couldn't have been better (with all their experience & finesse). Its gonna be incredible.

Q. Okay if the “one”-p-t-a-m turns their back. How are we going to proceed?
A. Well in that (unfortunate) case, we are on our own.

Things we'll Need:

• People to take pictures and help produce the book (called Volunteers)

• Technical Know-how with some of the finest pagemaker tools (think Adobe)

• Cameras, computers, software for page layout (called Symbiosis)

• Lots of time and patience (called Persistence)

• Candid Photographs & Written articles having relevance to us (We the Living)

• Advertisers (in case we need to get the book published even for the final year alone) – Would people be willing to pay?

• Publishers (ours is a small town. Right?)

• Portraits (passport sized maybe) of the multitude of students.

Q. Great! So we need pictures of everyone in the campus?
A. Not really. Just the final year graduating (or maybe more than that. As in M.B.A. and M.C.A.). It'll be an every year (annual) affair. Each time for the current final year.

Q. How is KNOL related to any of it?
A. KNOL is a platform where ideas merge and beauty is CREATED. Its just a random thought occurred to one of our (CRAPpy) creative leads. If you can see the very obvious... KNOL is, in a way, very flexible & can take any part...from playing the role of an online college-forum(like Orkut-Community)... surveying machine....to an online college-magazine. Lets shape out something good. & make it (!world) a better place to Live-in.

Update: 20080128

• KNOL is not going to work with any committee “officially”. Its not that we didn't try.

  KNOL is autonomous... Its informal & thats why is so flexible.. that no one knows where did the December edition go!!! Of course there are lovely people who have agreed to assist us.

• For doing all the work successfully we need more people in our Team. If you are interested, then please write to us or contact via phone numbers.

• As of now this YearBook, once made, will be available online in our very favorite PDF format. Lets call it DY-KNOL (Digital Yearbook KNOL) [Pronounced: Dai-KNOL] henceforth.

• This PDF can be printed out (we can make arrangements of that later if possible).

  Efforts are being made to make a hard-copy of the Book available to everyone FREE OF COST. If not, then at least to those who contributed well.

• The Plan is.. that once the email-ids are collected (How & What comes later). We'll send people the questionnaires & online links to be filled in.

• Questionnaires will have things like 'confessions', 'crush-list', 'things-I'll-miss', 'experiences-earned' and 'testimonials' etc. Online we'll run polls to Elect (& give titles to) 'the Cutest Guy in the batch' & 'the Fart-o-phile'.. et al.

• The Current Friend Circles(groups) in the final year batch can share with the world about their little heaven. The pet-names for everyone. The Story behind the group. Lingos.. Jargons.. & what not [The beauty of a Digital YearBook lies in its ability - “Size NO-Bar”. A separate page can be given to each member of the group]

• What we need people for:

  • Section Representatives:

    One guy & one gal (Mechanical department can be an exception here) would be collecting passport sized photographs, permanent email-ids, phone-nos (girls can give their work-phone or dad's number) of the students in the section in the final year.

  • CONTENT COLLECTORS:

    These people know the art of nagging well and so can do the very dangerous and tedious job of getting something beautiful (think: articulation) out of “We the People”.

  • FUND RAISER: (optionally)

    To get this thing printed out (published), we need money & the highly coveted skill to negotiate. So a little influence is required. Socialites to pay heed.

  • Photographers:

    Candids, and pictures of the campus and of any incidents. Please share with us.. all your amazing collections if you want that to be part of the issue.

  • Story Tellers & Elephants:

    Its said that Elephants have a sharp memory. We need these guys to narrate to the lesser mortals (like us) & make us recollect the Incidents (like The MESS Strike.. the Audi Wall.. or the Wedding(s) in the campus. et al) and of course the individual Achievements of the students of the batch (think: IIT-R.. GRE.. Google SOC). We'd really appreciate if such photographs come & the knowledge is shared with us.

  • Creative Leads:

    People who'll give ideas for the content in the DY-KNOL... stuff like we talked about and assistance to the designers for the colors-combinations and the graphics.

  • DY-KNOL designers:

    We'll train people how we work at KNOL and how we create the document every month. On top of this knowledge & technical guidance the development will commence (parallel-processing is the word).

  • Editors:

    These editors decide upon the content that comes and finally takes out the best & make it better keeping the morality alive.

  • Copy-Desk:

    Speedy typists to copy the handwritten stuff (if any) to the electronic archives for later use & persistence.

Post a comment if you could make a perception.