Yearbook Cover

UPDATED: See post #19

This year our staff decided to use the theme ourspace.com A place for spartans, and as one of my responcibilities as Photo Editor I have to design the cover.

I atempted to make a cover following the Myspace homepage to the dot, but it came out to busy and crowded. Then while I was going through some of the books a publisher sent us to show how decent their printer quality is I got inspired by the cover design.

The layout is in order of Back-Spine-Front.

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Its nice and clean. I hope you've already registered the domain ourspace.com else someone will most likely put up a naughty website there in the hopes of some free advertising.

John,

I ran a WhoIs search on ourspace.com and its current held by godaddy.com till 2012.

That could be true, someone could be cybersquatting on it hoping that one day someone will want to purchase it. My worries are that what if the owners of this all of the sudden start advertising on this site. Of course, I doubt they'll see your yearbook and jump through the hoops to take advantage of trying to capitalize on your 'book. Another idea would be, if you don't own the site, would a sue-happy domain owner be interested in legal action?

I looked at your design and immediately went to ourspace.com, I bet nine out of ten others will do the same and it goes to a dead site with tons of ads, of which one is for russian brides. Thats kind of creepy.

Does your school have a website? Could you perhaps get the designer to create a subdomain and change the whole design to ourspace.myhighschoold​omain.com?

Sorry to be a downer, working in IT I see good domains go bad and people going out of their way trying to capitalize on a misspelled domain name or similar instances. Think about it.

BradT0517 wrote in post #4066831
John,

I ran a WhoIs search on ourspace.com and its current held by godaddy.com till 2012.

I'm confused. What does this have to do with photography?

The design is fine. The blue is too dark or light — you choose. I would go lighter so that it pops off the dark red. Keep in mind though, warm blues on cool reds can sometimes have the tendency to bounce or vibrate because they are so close to opposites on the color wheel. You may be somewhat color blind so show it to several people, especially women, to see what they see. Girls tend to be more sensitive to color.

Unfortunately Gamut a lot of us are called on for design work since we have that creative 'eye'. Nothing really to do with Photography but still somewhat related.

Funny thing is, design is how I make my living. I'm happy to lend critique to the kid's yearbook project, but I think he'd be better served on a different forum. Most people here, in my experience, are not designers and will not lend him the advice he really needs.

I agree, photographers do have a creative side, but there are vast differences between the two.

milleker wrote in post #4067228
I looked at your design and immediately went to ourspace.com, I bet nine out of ten others will do the same and it goes to a dead site with tons of ads, of which one is for russian brides. Thats kind of creepy.

Does your school have a website? Could you perhaps get the designer to create a subdomain and change the whole design to ourspace.myhighschoold​omain.com?

This. Especially the second part. Also, is that the logo from Trojan condoms, or did you use your school's actual logo? Either way, it looks an awful lot like Trojan condoms.


[Fast-forward about 20 seconds]
So I just checked out the Trojan website, and it's definitely a different logo. I guess that just shows how little time I spend looking at packaging, but how powerful associative advertising can be.
[/Fast-forward]

My reasoning for posting the design on POTN was because through my reading I have found that there are many graphic designers here, so I expected to find a couple to give me some tips. Such as the red and blue vibrations even though I have never experienced this phenominon.

As for the use of ourspace.com I emailed my adviser, editor, and business director. I told them about the different ads and the options of different sites that we could use instead of ourspace.com.

Then for the spartan head I found the original file on some website through a google search. It was available for download a pumkin carving stencil.

Brad

I don't think a yearbook should have a web address that doesn't even relate to the school. I'm sure you'd end up with calls from parents that the website on the cover doesn't exist, etc. Plus when you look back years from now, what really did "ourspace.com" mean to that class?? Probably nothing.

The design is nice and clean, to the point without distractions from uneccesary elements. I like it!

Redhot,

Truthfully ourspace doesn't have anything to do with the class. I haven't found any books that has to deal with a class in particular it will generally be towards the entire student body. It is more of our generation as everybody seems to be addicted to social networking. (Myspace, Facebook, POTN, etc.) Even though I was against it from the get go back in April when we were brain storming themes I didn't have enough say and everybody else liked the ourspace theme.

As for the use of a website URL you may call it ignorance, thick skulled, or hard headed, but if the parent doesn't typically care about the book to much except the senior tribute they buy comes out correctly. One exception to that was yesterday I was calling ex-seniors to let them know about the autograph party and I was chewed out by the parent because we don't get the books out before the end of the school year.

I am no designer or even close to one,,, but...

When I think of space and spartans, I think of dark colors and high contrast...

http://www.thechair.gr …ads/2006/09/spa​rtans3.jpg

Update:

After bringing up the conflict ourspace.com produced with my staff we decided upon spartanspace.como. Yes I do mean Como as our school's name is Comeaux, so we used it as a play on words. Then earlier today I purchased the right to spartanspace.com as to keep the site "safe." I will be posting the updated tomorrow after we finish up my open house.

As a yearbook advisor myself, I like the clean lines of your design. We considered a take off on My Space, too, but most of the kids use Facebook now. Our theme this year is "Bits and Pieces of Our Lives." The cover is a big jigsaw puzzle with 70 interlocking images of students. There's also a puzzle piece shaped cutout on the front that goes through to the endsheet, where the theme will show through. We're also going to have a simple table of contents on the endsheet since were getting the theme printed on it anyhow. Who is your yearbook publisher? We use Jostens.