Design Statement

A few of my staff members and I attended the Rocky Mountain Journalism Camp on June 27-31. We brainstormed the story for the year: Brighton High School is one of three high schools in our community. Being the original OG high school, we have noticed that people have sort of overlooked all we have accomplished and who we are because the other two schools are so new. With the building of a new CTE Center done we have gained new spaces to allow people to express themselves. We have been waiting for this new building to be done and it was finally finished and we felt that BHS finally got the recognition it needed in Brighton. We want to remind our community that we are still the best high school in town. 

This story led us to discover the words “Yeah, We Always Knew We’d Be Here,” from a TikTok from the Denver Nuggets. The TikTok talked about how the Nuggets were seen as underdogs to everyone else but they will show everyone they’re the champions. We felt this message tied directly to what we wanted to convey. 

I knew as I began to choose visual elements for this next yearbook, it needed to be different that the one I helped design last year.  I chose visual elements we as a staff wanted to showcase throughout the book to drive consistency and coverage of our theme. We knew we wanted to experiment with gradients because we had found a few inspirations in magazines that had some nice coloring. I soon found a Depeche Mode poster on Pinterest along with some other modified posters. I liked how the photos were a mix of cutouts and candids within gradient bars. We had done black and white photography in 2023, so I chose not to follow that element. I like the contrast of purple and blue so I used this on the cover and decided to keep that for all thematic pages. I liked the layering of the inspirations so I added transparent bars to place on top of photos to add more contrast. 

While selecting the perfect fonts, I wanted to choose fonts that would complement one another, yet still have some contrast to match the vibe of our yearbook. While looking at the Depeche Mode poster, I liked the contrast of outlined and filled with in the font. I chose News Gothic Demibold because it looked the best when these two elements were applied. With the word "yeah," I wanted something that could really contrast with News Gothic because the word brought the confidence and sass of what we were trying to prove.  The font that best fit this criteria was Epicursive Script.  We used it only in headlines and with one word or phrase that really provided confidence. News Gothic was used for copy and captions as well. 

When it came down to designing photo packages, a trend I saw in a lot of magazines I was pulling inspiration from was photo packages with some overlapping but also photo packages that were separated from the package, but you knew it still was part of the package. This would be something that we would utilize throughout the entire book on various pages. 

I wanted to include an all-coverage device throughout the book, and I found a ton of Nike ads that had quotes go around the edges. I decided to add that to our cover. It didn't go all the way around the spread, but at most three could fit. I wanted spreads to have variety so we mixed it up from spread to spread as a majority had two while some had one or three. 

Finally I really wanted to design with color. I loved the overlapping of green and black on the cover that I wanted to continue that throughout the book. On thematic spreads, we chose to stay with the blue and purpose gradient. Throughout the book, we pulled color from photos where atleast two or sometimes three colors were chosen for the gradient. 

*Note: The following spreads will show the design choices I made in the book. Click on the spread photo or caption title link to view the image in a browser for zooming capabilities.