The yearbook is a collection of pictures and text that celebrates a very important year in the life of students.
In June of 1890, Central High School, in Minneapolis, delivered to their students, what was at the time, a very new product… a yearbook! The concept of preserving school memories took off, becoming a beloved tradition for over 160 years.
Durning that extended period of time, the yearbook had changed… somewhat. Up until the late 1950’s, the cost of print was expensive and hence, printers were charging schools for each picture in the yearbook. Looking back at old yearbooks, it is noticeable that there seems to be not as many pictures as we would expect n 2025.
What is sociologically interesting is that the seniors look old, despite the fact that they were only 18. The clothes they wore (rarely graduation gowns) certainly look dated to us, the hair styles are distinctive to the times and the men seemed to have more thick wavy hair. The fact that all of the pictures in yearbooks were in black and white helped make them look older. It almost appeared that the world was black and white until around the 1960’s.
The graphic presentation was very basic, partly because every graphic element, from a rule line to a black background, cost extra. Overall graphic design was more simple decades ago also made the books look dated.
I have my Dad’s 1942 high school yearbook. All the above applies. And there were small items that screamed 1940’s. Each senior had a list of preferences under their senior portraits, one was their favorite cigarette!
In the 70’s, yearbooks started to have a few pages of color, typically between 8 and 16. This is due to how books are bound. The pages are not printed individually, but in a large sheet that has eight pages on one side (called a flat) and eight on the other. Color was priced by the flat.
In 1994, the cost of printing color had come down so much that yearbooks suddenly became all color. That was the biggest innovative advancement in yearbooks in history. Unfortunately, 36 years later, there has been no innovation in the actual yearbook (although how the yearbook is put together has gone digital) at all… until now.
YearBoxx was introduced in late 2024… and yearbooks have changed in a dramatic fashion, making up for decades of parity.
Below is a partial list of the electrifying innovative changes YearBoxx has brought to yearbooks:
- The yearbook is now on student’s cellphone, tablet, and laptop computer.
- YearBoxx has embedded video.
- YearBoxx has no deadlines, making it possible to preserve memories of the entire school year, from the first day to graduation.
- Each senior gets their own portal, where they can brand themselves and tell their own story.
- Seniors can update their portal by uploading pictures… forever.
- Classmates can stay connected using in app protocols.
- Mistakes can be instantly corrected.
- There is no limit to the number of pictures and video in YearBoxx. Yearbook staffs do not have to limit the number of memories that can be represented.
- Being accessible on cellphones, YearBoxx is always available, it will never end up in a box somewhere.
- YearBoxx can never be lost.
- The cost for a dramatically more relevant yearbook is now less than ten bucks, down from an average of seventy-five dollars.
After decades of little innovation, the above is a staggering amount of innovation, all in a very short period of time.
The advent of ‘digital,’ over a decade ago, has been the main driver of this stunning evolution. The Digital Revolution has changed our lives in such a dramatic and intimate fashion that it is hard to imagine the time before digital.
Gen Z, the first generation born digital, wouldn’t know what to do with a rotary phone (I’m sorry, to make a call you want me to stick my finger where?) … how to make music come out of that plate size vinyl disk… how to change gears in a car (wait a minute, I have to use my feet to make it go in reverse?) … the idea of taking pictures, then needing to take a little cylinder to the drug store, and have to wait a week to see the pictures (Mom, how did you live like that?).
Indeed, how DID those of us older than thirty live like that? As the digital yearbook becomes the defacto yearbook, and our children come home with them, we may feel a little cheated that our yearbook, and who knows where it actually is, doesn’t have video… and we can’t update it… and it doesn’t even chronical graduation!
Well, at least we will have flying cars soon?
