Woolooware High School

School yearbook project management, design and publication

For several years, creating their school yearbook was a stressful experience for Wooloware High School (to say the least). They knew they needed to transition to a new, easier and smoother way of creating the yearbook. They decided to engage Emroy to help.

The challenge

When student-managed, there would be different contributors with conflicting opinions and ideas about how the yearbook should look. Additionally, yearbooks are big projects to manage. With the students having conflicting priorities, finding enough time to collect content, collaborate on the design and finalise the yearbook took a lot of work.

Our approach

Yearbooks are deceptively large projects. They typically involve many content contributors and due dates to track. The project is generally divided into multiple phases over many months.

Our first step was collaborating with the school to build a timeline that worked for all key stakeholders. Once complete, everyone had advanced notice of what was required and when. If any component started to fall behind, it could be identified and fixed before it affected the project’s due date.

Thankfully, Emroy has extensive experience crafting a design that balances keeping the various decision-makers happy but, more importantly, maintains a professional quality that accurately conveys the school’s brand. Most crucially, we separated the concept design of the yearbook into a separate phase, which was completed earlier. This way, the concept was universally loved once it was time to work on the full draft.

When it came to supplying the content needed for the yearbook, Emroy had many tools available to help this process, including templates for page ladders, content collection guides, and a team to give advice when needed.

Typical with projects that span multiple months, various hiccups and roadblocks did pop up at different stages. However, due to our extensive experience working with yearbooks, we could point these out in advance, help Wooloware High School course correct, and make up some lost time when needed.

The end result

Even though 2022 was our first year working with Wooloware High School, it was one of the most well-received yearbooks the school has ever created. It meant there was now a new standard for their annual yearbook. As they’ve already locked in Emroy to begin their 2023 yearbook, we’re confident that the standard will be maintained.

The best part? The yearbook was designed, printed and distributed ahead of schedule. Meaning it could be handed out the day students recieved their ATAR results. What a perfect moment for students to reflect on the year that was and feel proud of everything they accomplished!