Each year, the yearbook staff at Woodbridge High work together to produce a tangible way for the student body to reflect and look back on their high school memories. Throughout the year, the staff team work tirelessly to meet their deadlines and ensure a high quality yearbook for students.
“At the beginning of the year, [the team] makes five or six templates that we use throughout the year,” senior and Editor-in-Chief Skyland Kanthatham said. “Before each deadline…we assign everyone…[what] they have to take pictures of.”
This year’s theme draws inspiration from graphic novels and comics, a source of nostalgia and reminiscence. Editors cooperate steadfastly to emulate graphic novel designs. They also seek to create cohesive designs that not only match the overarching theme, but also seamlessly blend together from page to page.
“Comic books, especially for people of our generation, [are] still something everyone can connect…and relate to; and [the comic theme is] creative enough to carry out throughout the [yearbook],” senior and editor Sanika Patwardhan said.
Each year, the Yearbook team intentionally selects their themes. They seek to find themes that resonate with the wider student body, as well as the staff and faculty. This year, the theme seeks to evoke nostalgia, encouraging memories of childhood play and fantasies.
“I think nostalgia is one of the things we thought about and comic books came up…[because] they take us back to our childhood. Taking that idea and then bringing it into what we do with the yearbook, we thought [it] was an easy fit. [It is] a combination of nostalgia and art,” Yearbook advisor Matthew Takeno said.
Student yearbooks are meant to be a time capsule of all their memories during high school. Each one is filled with photographs, signatures and well-wishes, capturing a year’s worth of memories in only a few hundred pages.
“[A yearbook] really helps people be able to unlock their memories and things that they did [and] people especially,” Patwardhan said.
As the Yearbook advisor, Takeno worked closely with many different yearbook teams to help them produce personalized yearbooks that speak to the whole student body. As an alumni of Woodbridge High’s class of 1996, the yearbook and its missions carry a special place in his heart. He hopes that each generation of students will find similar comfort in the memory capsule that is each and every yearbook.
“I guess my goal is to sort of continue the legacy of the school and just try to represent it,” Takeno said. “I think it’s like the legacy of it and being able to go back and relive where you are right now 10, 20 or 30 years from now…You get to relive it and feel young again for a second.”
For many students and staff members, yearbooks are an important way of keeping in touch with the past. Of course, one of the most memorable parts of each year’s yearbook is its distribution and signing.
“[Students] have the opportunity to sit down with each other at senior barbecue [and] take in the last moments of being a high school student here,” Takeno said.
This personalization is what makes each yearbook a true memory box and homage to great memories as pages are filled with kind regards, best wishes and bittersweet goodbyes.
“Having something tangible is also important for future generations when the world is becoming more digitized [so that] there is still something to hold onto that you can look back on,” Kanthatham said.
As Yearbook reaches the final leg of their publishing process, they look forward to celebrating their dedication and hard work with the greater student body, and share a year’s worth of memories in a keepsake truly worth keeping.
