True to U

Published in the 2023 Warrior Yearbook, a collaborative effort between Savannah Ruiz and Natalie Garwood

Reflection

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to work on True to U my junior year. It was my first exposure to theme development in high school and gave me the perfect time to practice before doing it all on my own senior year.

This was a joint effort with Editor-in-Chief Savannah Ruiz. Savannah focused on the theme copy and concept while I worked on the design elements like the cover, endsheets, dividers, folios, etc. We aimed to highlight the individuality of U, rather than the school as a whole as it had been the previous year.

Cover

Front Endsheet

Parting Page

Title Page

The Process

Theme development for True to U began in the summer of 2022 at MIPA's Summer Journalism Workshop. I was taking InDesign for Publications to learn more about design while Editor-in-Chief Savannah Ruiz worked on the theme. Once we got started, we realized it was becoming more of a joint effort than we had thought it would be. Savannah focused on the theme copy and concept, I worked mostly on the design aspect. She showed me an inspirational photo for the cover, and I created the cover you see at the top.

Before this project, I really had not done much design, as our former editor-in-chief had a strong passion for design. In the beginning, I tried to kind of hang back and let Savannah do her thing so I could just learn what to do. Yeah that didn't last long.

I used my time in InDesign for Publications to design a draft of our sports divider, cover, and endsheets to help the Savannah with her theme project and I was so incredibly proud of what we had accomplished over the span of a week. We went from absolutely nothing to an amazing theme.

The goal was for this theme to represent individual students throughout the school. After Covid, students were seen in groups. A block or B block. Sick, quarantined, or well. The previous year, the theme had been "My Tribe," clumping students together again. While it fit with our mascot (The Chieftain), it didn't allow us to see the uniqueness of our student body.

This was really the first exposure I had to theme design in the high school setting, and I was beyond grateful to have this experience before having to do it all on my own.

Designs were a collaborative effort between Savannah Ruiz and Natalie Garwood

All photos on spreads by Natalie Garwood