Ladies and gentlemen, the 2009 Razorback yearbooks are here!
Take a minute to let that sink in:
THE. YEARBOOKS. ARE. HERE.

Best day ever? I think so.

These are the first full-color yearbooks in the history of the Razorback so don't miss out on getting your copy. There are 352 pages of people, concerts, profiles, football, greeks, baseball, the ice storm, campus events and more. And not that I'm biased or anything, but I happen to think this is the best yearbook this university has ever seen. :)

So swing by the Union connections lounge next week and grab a copy or if you miss the staff there, you can come by the yearbook office any time and pick one up. We are located in the basement of Kimpel, room 119L.

See you soon!
-Megan

Labels: distribution, yearbook

It's been a while since we've posted, mostly because the new editor, Helen Chase has her hands full trying to get started on the next issue of the Razorback!

Sometime soon there will start being regular postings here, all about the fun stuff going on down in the basement of Kimpel. But in the meantime! I'm taking a moment to update and share a spectacular moment with you. It's sure to amuse, because that's something Shannon and I do well.

At some point today the yearbook staff received three advance copies of the 2009 book. Which means the rest of them are on a slow boat from China on their way to us. But these copies give us a chance to check them out before they arrive. Helen told Shannon about their arrival, who told me. After I finished screaming like a 15-year-old girl who just got asked to the prom by the quarterback of the high school football team, I jumped in the car and ran to the office to grab one.

Now, Shannon is in Austin, Texas, so she has no way of seeing these gorgeous books until they all come in and we can send her one. Since I didn't want her to miss out on the first look at what we worked so hard on all of last year, we rigged up a solution.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, we were able to video chat and I showed her the pages of the book. And thanks to the wonders of my roomie's iPhone, you can now see the whole ridiculous thing. :)

-Megan, 2009 Co-Editor

*Warning this video contains large amounts of high-pitched giggling from two former Razorback editors.

Labels: 2009, advance copies, yearbook

I like to call this post, "How You Know You've Spent Too Much Time In The Yearbook Office." And I shall subtitle it, "Deadline Three Pushes Editor Shannon Sanders Off The Deep End."


So. You know you've spent too much time in the basement of Kimpel when your poor addled brain starts thinking thoughts like these.

Setting: It's Saturday afternoon and we are crazy behind on deadline. To make things worse, we have a mountain of proofs on our desks that we need to edit and correct. So we plan to go in Sunday to work.
The following is an actual transcript of mine and Shannon's texting conversation:

Shannon: What time do you want to go in to the office tomorrow?

Megan: Ug. I don't know. Ten? Ten thirty?

Shannon: Okay, how about ten?

Megan: Sigh. Okay.

Shannon: Woohooo! It'll be funsies. Like we are captured by crazy bayou pirates who are making us do all of their yearbook work for them in a cool underground fort. At least that's what I'm going to think about.

Megan: Um, you are off a cliff right now.

Labels: deadline, editors, funny, office, yearbook

We're currently at work on our next deadline, which includes some profiles of some very interesting people on campus. 

Labels: Bubba Hog, deadline, fans, yearbook

Hey everyone,
Sorry for the long silence, but we were out of school for almost a week and out of power as well! Fayetteville took quite a beating from Ice Storm 09, and we haven't been able to get out of our apartments, much less make it to school to work on our impending deadline.

A few words about the storm:
It hit Monday night, and the ice and snow is just now disappearing from most of the city. The ice was about an inch thick at some points on cars, trees, homes, sidewalks, etc. The majority of the damage though was from fallen trees. This is definitely the worst winter storm Fayetteville has ever seen, and the town looks like a war zone. Huge trees lost limbs like they were matchsticks, and giant trunks either split right down the middle, or just were completely uprooted from the weight of the ice on their branches. Whoa.
Our wonderful city crews have been out clearing debris, but there is still so much to be done, there's no telling when all the limbs and wreckage will be cleared. More than 38,000 are still without power, including our very own editor in chief, Shannon Sanders. She's going on Day Five with no electricity, heat, etc. And she's not very happy about it.

And in addition to knocking down trees, canceling classes for four days and stranding thousands without power, Ice Storm 09 took some serious chunks out of our plan for making this deadline. We have to send 72 pages ASAP, and we were already working on a tight schedule. Now we have lost a week of time in the office, our writers and photographers have had to push back interviews and photoshoots, and this week in addition to playing catchup, we will also have to take RSO group photos. Yikes!!

Oh, and we still have to design a freaking cover. No big deal.
So more to come, as the drama unfolds here at the Razorback. Also, check back soon for new Photos of the Week, and some great new Facebook pics of the ice and snow!

Labels: campus, damage, ice storm, weather, yearbook

So here's an interesting tidbit. Two spreads (four pages) from the Razorback Yearbook have been featured in a textbook. The book is called Creative Editing and you can check it out on Amazon.com right here.

The publishers are working on a Canadian edition, and we got an email asking for our copyright permissions to use the pages. Of course, we agreed. Here's a picture of the pages in context, so you can see just what this book has to say about our work.

Anyways, it's pretty cool to think that the hard work of UA students is being put into a textbook for other students to use as an example. I'm not sure exactly what year these pages are from, although I know it's near 1993 since that's when Bud Walton opened. But I bet the yearbook staffers from back then would be proud to know their work was still being acknowledged.

And if you want a look at the new things coming from the Razorback staff, we have just put up some sneak peek pages from our 2009 book! You can check them out here on Facebook, or at the Sneak Peek page on our website. Be sure to let us know what you think!
-Megan

Labels: awards, editing, past yearbooks, razorback, textbook, yearbook

The other day I was trolling for "caricatures" on Flickr. I'm secretly trying to work on my artistic edge and it's entertaining to draw simplified pictures of people. I really digg simplicity in art.

Labels: comics, excelsior, yearbook

This just in from co-editor Megan:

"IT'S A NEW RAZORBACK RECORD! We gave away 4,000 books in 3 days!!!
Amazing!!"

So, we're done with Distribution. We don't have anymore books to handout. We'll hold the drawing for free textbooks soon and keep you updated!

Labels: arkansas, distribution, yearbook

I feel the title of "webmaster" should remind people of cheesy-fingered overweight world-of-war-craft men. Is that who I am? Maybe inside. DEEP inside.

We've made it about a week since moving everything from /new/ to the main location. There are some obvious changes, and some not-so-obvious.

First, I wanted to share some yearbook.uark.edu history. Shannon reminded me of how dreadful some of the old designs for the site were. I had some fun clicking threw the old sites with archive.org.


In 2002, the website had a 90's journalism vibe. It looked like a website you'd visit for daily headlines on campus, but sadly the content didn't agree with its design. Not to mention it was laid out with tables!

But that's okay, it was 2002. There was also a nonfunctional "archive" section; much like ours today (this will change soon). Sometime later that year a new design emerged, borrowed from the 2001-02 yearbook.

Note how the centered, floating site remained, yet most other elements are dropped. A swirly Zapfino typeface appears snuggling with "Georgia, Times New Roman, and serif" for the content text. The links and header are embossed and cut with Photoshop. This would have been Photoshop 6 or 7, and guessing the Yearbook funding of the day, probably version 6. And then things stayed pretty much the same for awhile.

Until this May, when we launched our new website. It was extremely overdue and offered a very vibrant, fresh approach to the Razorback's online presence. Using a .png drop shadow, the still-centered site added depth. It also felt interactive, with "submit" buttons for photos and stories.

The navigation took a modern turn, opting for an all-at-the-top approach, rather than split on the sides. "Events" and "Archive" came closer together, along with other pages in the yearbook-webby family. The "sneak peak" section added insider images from the upcoming volume. This preview generates excitement, a little taste of what's to come. A "staff" and "about" section were added, giving a tangible feel to our organization. Who are we and where did we come from? (answers: aliens, mars)

Most of all the site felt robust with a rotating header image and hover effects. It also opted for a modern all-around sans-serif typeface for text, usually more appropriate for web space.

And now Vanna, if you'll be so kind:

Our new site. Yes, the above image looks like the site from May, but it has really changed. She's been outfitted with a new engine, with more standards-based coding and individual style sheets for individual pages. She's also capable of growing per page, with a background that adapts to more content, requiring less Photoshop cuts.

We've nixed some pages: Upcoming Events and Contact. The events page wasn't very, er...upcoming. And the contact page just pointed to our location, email, and phone. The blog should address the former, the footer should address the latter.

And we've added the "Photo of the Week" page, with pictures from our very fabulous photographers. I'm hoping to figure out some RSS secrets, so users can opt-in to seeing the photo-of-the-week as it's published. We've got this in the blog, thanks to Blogger's automatic RSS-generator. I hope it can go further.

I'm still stripping and debugging and re-working, so shoot me an email if you've found a goofy patch of yearbook web. I'm at jschleus@uark.edu.

Also, my next job is to re-work the archive section, which I'll preview next week. I'd love feedback, so feel free to comment or shoot an email.

Labels: design, history, razorback, web design, yearbook

Whoo! Once the new website is uploaded things will be much smoother. I'm pretty sure we'll be the first yearbook with a blog.

Labels: blogger, yearbook

The accolades just keep rolling in for the 2007 Razorback, which received 27 awards at the Arkansas College Media Association’s 2007 conference. The yearbook swept two categories, as well as taking first place in the General Excellence category.

Labels: arkansas college media association, yearbook

The 2007 Razorback Yearbook has been named a finalist for the Pacemaker award! Given out by the Associated Collegiate Press, the Pacemaker is the highest honor a student publication can receive, and is considered to be the Pulitzer Prize of student journalism. The Razorback is one of 15 finalists for the award, which will be awarded in November.

Labels: awards, pacemaker, yearbook