Every school year at Central Kitsap High School a yearbook is created documenting the events that had proceeded throughout the year. Today we’re looking at the process that goes into the creation of the schools yearbook.

Jeff Schmitt is our current CKHS yearbook advisor. His primary duties as yearbook advisor include teaching design, photography, and writing as well as scouting future students to be on the yearbook staff in upcoming years. He described the main components that go into the yearbooks creation.

“Conceptualizing the whole book starting with the theme which we want to try to carry throughout the whole book, getting a good leadership team together, building a staff, usually we start at least the year before coming up with our theme the year before,” said Schmitt. “I network through my photography classes and find great photographers.. trying to find capable writers, it’s a long process.”

Yearbook staff member Madison Grant also describes her take on the process.

“We’re constantly on the ground getting photos of students doing different activities or maybe just being in class, then we take those back to our classroom and edit them and organize them into spreads to create the actual yearbook,” said Grant. 

Grant’s primary job on the yearbook staff as the head of marketing. The marketing head position’s duties include putting out advertisements for the yearbook and controlling yearbook sales.

According to Grant, the main goal considered when creating the yearbook is capturing all the aspects of student life.

“Fully capturing all aspects of student life, even things that may be a bit hard to digest like the pandemic but at the end of the day still being real about it.”

“It’s a timepiece of their year here,” said Schmitt. “Whether it’s a freshman or a senior, with the yearbook we put out, our goal is to showcase the whole year.”

There are also several requirements that the staff needs to meet regarding photos. They try to get every student covered in the yearbook and work to make sure there isn’t an abundance of any singular student.

“We basically have a rule where we don’t put yearbook team members repeatedly in the yearbook and we try to get every student covered with the limited amount of photos we can put in,” said Grant. 

“This is a very challenging goal considering we have over 1,640 students,” said Schmitt. 

The staff must make sure that they have good shots as well. They must later go through an approval process to ensure they have good enough quality.

“If it’s a good shot, good picture, then we look at it, edit it, and that’s essentially the process. As long as it’s appropriate, an action shot, it’s lively, and something’s going on in the photo,” says Grant.

The yearbook team also has to cater to certain restrictions and requirements that are commonly seen in all journalistic writing.

“Are there any restrictions about what can and can’t go in a newspaper?” said Schmitt.

The general content of the yearbook is determined by the whole staff as a collaboration. The determining factors for said content however falls into certain categories. It must be relevant, interesting, and about the student body. 

To summarize the process; the staff is assembled and a theme is selected, they’re given their leadership roles, and they then begin to gather as much content as they can and start the editing process to create the yearbook we all know and love.