T. Relth

In the end:
The 2013 Yearbook is graphically beautiful, well-written, very integrated and looks like one person made it woohooo! and the staffers were very good (great), although sometimes require a bit more pressure from the "ogre" (Mister. R)

New EIC1 Senior Leah Mc. - (she published her own book 2013 now on Amazon)Every single paragraph on every page was either written, rewritten or at least checked by Leah. In the last days, she was still inventing captions.

EIC2 Sabrina F. (a Junior yet with a way amazing work ethic) Sabrina came in every day and extra days to work, work, work, work, well you get the idea.

Graphic Editor, Zineb M. (wow all of the backgrounds with illustrator converted into pdf and dropped in a bkg layer) This scientist of an artist made months-worth of backgrounds and theme ideas...before landing on the final illustrator files and as I say wow.

Senior Amalya B. and the never-ending Senior section - built the 48 page senior section with 470 column inches of story about the class of 2013, plus senior spotlight stories on each and mug-shot plus two portraits and 6 facebook type photos for each... Lotsa work. Collection of anything from Seniors with Senioritis = Herding Cats!

Others who were there: ...drum-roll please:

"The New Kid", Junior from SoCal, Spencer C. - odd sense of humor and great graphic sense, a bit "ADD" etc quote: "I'm not prejudiced, I pretty much hate everyone" -MS and K sections very nice work.

Editor, Rania T. (Junior) sweet as pie and worked very hard.. entire ES section and all transitions. She picked up a lot of slack at the end!! Yahoo. Rania, did YB while juggling several extracurriculars. We thought she might explode ... but she always charged ahead.

Then... there were these two crazy Sophomores: Yasmine B.and Salma B. who were veeerrrryyy creative (almost tttooo much) Yasmine built the whole MS and HS sport section. And Salma made all of the major events "dance" with seriously "pro" level graphics. Did I say dance? I guess that is what they almost did everyday in the lab. (grin)

I miss these guys!

If I missed anything?? .. write to me.

... Oh yeah I spent almost another full year of time on this year's book.... vacations, weekends...but who is complaining?   Ask my wife.

Originally written to a 2009-10 former student at the school:

I can tell you that using Indesign for 5 years (and for 3 years on YB), I am now a "mini-power" indesign user/teacher.

I found out how to automatically merge the 900+ photos by grade, alpha and place correct names below... a major help using excel database. This saved an incredible amount of time ..after it was set-up.
 
Set Limits: 
Also style sheets and limitations on "creativity" were helpful. Otherwise the students tend to wander off in all directions and make a disjointed mess. The other big deal was to use a wire-framing concept in only B/W in Indesign at the beginning to force all of the students to face the limitations of design: space and page layout. 

Wire-framing/black white and greys:
The entire book was laid-out using wire-framing and was formatted with character, type style and paragraph styles along with borders and drop-shadows; all this showed from the beginning. We were able to kill (or revise)the really bad stuff early. Note: Color really gets in the way at first so B/W was the key. With this we were much more likely to see design that did not follow the main thrust of the book.

Layers:
I also insisted on using layers and we started with 4 but later had 6-7 layers in nearly every section. 

File-naming convention-less headaches:
Another help was to use special file names and save "as new" every single time you work ... it also told me when the students worked and I could go back (if needed)....also if a file crashed, we only lost a day. 
For example: 
20130423_77-89_Seniors_Amalya.indd 
(this way files listed in date-order in the file-folder: later we changed to 
77-89_Seniors_Amalya_20130602.indd so that all of the final pages listed in page-order. It was easy to see which files we finalized.

A fast server a MUST:
We were able to get IT to give us a new server ..(the old PC based "M_nr_e" became a slug ...maybe it always was a slug). We received a mac-mini and the art department students and Yearbook team were the only ones on it. The total GB when done ...99.7 GB!! of photos from staff and students and the total other graphics files was 175 GB +/-. It worked like water ...instead of sludge. 

Photos from everywhere - More file naming:
Another help was that I taught the Digital Photo Class with required DSLRs and used Adobe's Bridge Batch naming ... so we had lotsa properly labeled photos from which to draw. example:
20121209_JVSoccer_Sophia_DSC009.jpg


End Notes:
I am thinking of starting a club "International Yearbook Survivors Club" You have to have made more than 3 books to be accepted into membership. The only problem is that by the time you have completed year third year you are so wiped out that you would never let anyone know you did it. One, because someone might want to hire you to do it again and two, someone might ask you to advise.

All in all the best ever if I say so and many others say so too. TR

As I was walking across campus from the art room to the computer lab four years ago, I asked Nahla and Khnata: “Can you walk any slower? You two are doing the Moroccan Stroll”.  Nahla responded casually, “But, we are enjoying the moments on the way there Mister.  We’ll get there, there’s really no rush”.  All the while I was thinking about my agenda and what I wanted them to accomplish in the “C” lab today.  I suppose that I completely discounted what she said. 

Now I am sitting here at Sidi Rahal in an old blue camping chair, looking out over the grand blue-green Atlantic.  One hundred-plus high school students gather clique by clique: fraternity, sorority. Some of us observe and some chat, but mostly we hang out because that’s what we do.

Safiyyah (Moroccan-American) approaches. She has been here at the school for only 3 years, but she has made a great adjustment to our special hybrid American- School-in-Morocco social style. I ask her if she can describe what it is that we (the students) do best. “Just hanging out” she says without hesitation.

Today I sit for the fifth time at Sidi Rahal.  At least 30 of our students have their cameras, capturing the moments of the day for the annual Beach Day Photo Contest.   The fifteen winners will have their photos displayed in the Multi Purpose Room later this year, and will enjoy a big Pizza Bash.  Their work will be included in this year’s Yearbook.  

The high school math teacher Mr. Smith and I compare notes on students as we lounge on the beach observing the procession below: soccer, American football, soccer, swimming and volleyball games engage the majority, while at least forty share in our favorite activity: “Hanging out.” 

I see Paul walking and chatting with ….((( read in here  Adam L))) 

A group of students strolls past, shoulder to shoulder.  Lina, Amalya, Nada, Nizar, Dakir, Medhi, Maisson, Ibrahim, Waleed, Hajouji, Sofia and  Paul form a volleyball circle – no competition, just keep it going, hangin’ (white, pink, tan and almond skin in the sun.)

Later on, "FZ" sits with the dozen seniors as I approach “And so what’s the story of the day FZ?” “Today people are having fun - playing volleyball, swimming…. Everyone is interacting – no one is alone.  For example, these two.  (Referring to Amalya and Ghali , lying on towels next to hers)  They are not alone.  Only me, I’m alone .... talking with you  - Oh, ha ha” (as she realizes what she just said).

Hamza, FZ , Amalya and a few others walk to the cafe.  On the way I ask Hamza “what’s the story of the day?” “I haven’t discovered it yet”, he says. 

We order Sprite, Lavazza and Sidi Ali , and  park ourselves at the standing tables.  The proprietor is playing "Only You (And You Alone)" from 1955 by the Platters.  Leah (a new American student) lags behind.  The color changes.  It becomes more blue.  We talk about (God’s calling?)for 5 minutes as she finishes her Sprite. And then walk back to the group on the beach.

In my first year I could barely care who was who or what they were doing.  Today, I notice that most of the obnoxious, the entitled and the loud bunch has graduated or stayed home.  The day is tranquil, soft, sweet; the light is clear.  I know them, each one.  Nearly all have been in my classes since middle school.  It is a different time.  There is less discipline required; there is sweetness present. It is less complicated.

It was noon when I noticed there were now only four playing volleyball. Everyone else was sitting on towels in informal “salons.” Everyone was again talking, listening.  We were doing what we do best ...interacting, hangin’. Soon the freshmen would get to have their lunch.  

During the 2011-12 Christmas letter editing process a "t" got in my way.

My error = We proofread in Microsoft Word (well, actually iWorks Pages) but then...

During my later editing for layout in Adobe Indesign (the program we use for Yearbook print layout), the difference between keying "Esc t" (for add a Type window) and just a plain ol' "t" ended with a bit of humor.

As I was trying to place a new type box, I added a little ol' plain "t" and planted a "t" right there in the sentence. Because I was moving too quickly, and without noticing, I made "newt" instead of what was there .... "new". This error actually went to print but it was a newsletter for friends and luckily not for Yearbook.

Of course any dumb ol' spellchecker accepts "newt"* and I did not see it.

So there you go...duh.  One reader caught the error and brought it to my attention, writing that he was please to know that I had made a "newt" friend. It was a great dumb ol' professor error for my show-and-tell discussion when returning to Yearbook class the next morning. Most of the students did not catch the humor. 

I did appreciate it..however.

*for those of us unfamiliar ...a newt is an aquatic amphibian of the family Salamandridae. (wiki)

OK, so blogging is easy e a s y.  Not so easy to move.  I just want to move the old stuff over here so its all in one place.  But low and behold, I need to strip-mine my old blog for the gold and move what is of value.  Otherwise I will be here till school starts and there isn't time. 

I've asked several friends and apparently there is no great quick answer.  But this weebley.com interface is pretty intuitive so I am pressing on. 

In fact I think it is pretty easy to use and I will suggest it to students. Maybe next years ad art class we can all build a website.  Tom

http://trelth.blogspot.com/