Project Yearbook

     Yearbooks are publications that are meant to give information or highlight the current/previous year. Our 5th project for VD dealt with making mini yearbooks. This yearbook was meant to display our experience in our first year of Web Design (aka the entire year of VD). This was the first project done in teams and the first thing we did after meeting with our teams was assign roles. There was to be a leader, designer, researcher, and photographer. I was the researcher, which meant I gather information about yearbook structure, student info, school info, etc. However, later on I took on the roles of researcher, designer, and co-leader.
     After getting roles assigned we researched parts of a yearbook and took a look a various designs and ideas. Then we set a theme for our yearbook. Since we couldn't agree on one we choose the theme mosaic since we would try and combine multiple themes and styles into one. Planning time frames was next. We set small deadlines for completing specific parts of the yearbook which would eventually become the ultimate goal, completion of the yearbook itself.
     As the researcher I went online and found multiple sample yearbooks to follow as a guide structure wise and design inspiration. If there was a technical skill dealing with Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign my teammates didn't know as researcher I looked up videos abut the skill and showed it to my team. Additionally, I looked up pictures online if the photographer wasn't able to take a picture of something and I looked up information about the staff of our school to include in our yearbook. As the designer I was experimenting with different ideas on how to present something. I would take ideas from my teammates or go online for backgrounds of pages, presentation of pictures, and fonts. I also made sure the sections of the yearbook followed a logical order chronologically.
     This project was a great learning for me as a web designer in terms of working in a team. Our team faced a major challenge of getting work done on time which is due to the poor lack of planning and management in the team. People in our team would always switch role and wouldn't know what they're doing. If our team was more thorough when planning this wouldn't have happened and we could've met our deadline less stressful. So I learned having a plan, that is thorough but flexible, is key to group projects. I plan on using what I learned in this project in the future if I get a job dealing with working in teams. Since in the workplace getting a task done on time matters with quality matters it will be important that there is a well defined plan with roles that fit the skills of the teammates. That way we can ensure that the job gets done right and it will show our employer professionalism.