When most students arrive to college, their first thought is not, “I want to be included in the yearbook.” Actually, most do not know UNA has a yearbook, the Diorama, until we hand them out in April. Some do not even get to see what the Diorama does unless we run across them while we are attending events.

Creating the yearbook is a constant process of covering events, contacting people, designing and proofing spreads prior to the release of our final product. When we distribute the yearbooks at no charge in April, most students pick them up and look through them for the rest of the day.

Few students choose not to pick one up at all since there is so much social media to keep track of memories. Most of the time, it is never picked up again until he or she wishes to reminisce on the college years.

As the Executive Editor of the Diorama, I am making it my and the staff’s goal to provide students with a concrete collection of memories from the year to look back on in the future.

Of course, being included in a college yearbook seems difficult considering more than 7,000 students attend UNA. Like most staffs, we try our best to include as many students as possible as well as keep the book aesthetically pleasing. In order to do this, we make sure to include as many students on our spreads as possible, whether it is in a picture, interview or vote in a poll.

We try to give many options like more feature spreads, organizational photos and senior headshots to accommodate every type of student. If we had a yearbook three times as thick, we would try to include even more spreads, but unfortunately, no one likes to carry a 10-pound book.

A large chunk of the yearbook process consists of designing. As we are always striving to improve our design skills, we are introducing a contemporary theme that catches the fresh designs and color schemes trending this year.

Along with these changes, we are recreating the style of our cover from traditional to contemporary as well.

As I was looking at our collection of Dioramas on the shelf in the Student Media Office, I realized the only book that caught my eye was the Pepto-Bismol pink yearbook from 1995.

Most of the previous Dioramas are black, white, purple or gold, meaning they blend in with each other on the shelf. Since our theme will reflect the changes we are making in this year’s Diorama, we will be adding a new twist to our cover that will make this year’s book different from any other.