eDesign

Although I have a mentor, I’ve been having some trouble actually figuring out what to do for my mentorship hours (since she’s a yearbook teacher, I wouldn’t exactly be able to go to her class to shadow/help). Therefore, the most I’ve been doing that can relate to my project is actually working on iPoly's yearbook.

This year, we made a massive change in software (from InDesign to the Herff Jones company’s eDesign). Even though this new eDesign is essentially a very stripped down version of InDesign, it has many, many benefits.

[Note: The small amount of features on the left-hand toolbar]

The most useful features of eDesign are the organizational features. Some might consider it the savior of yearbook. Since the entire program is browser based, the staff can access it anywhere with an internet connection. This solves a plethora of problems yearbook has had in the past, especially since we've only been able to get actual work done in class (where the computers are), and it solves the issue of file formats for different versions of InDesign.

The eDesign ladder is essentially a living book. That means we can see the entire book, all in one spot, and it updates in real-time. Here, and example for ya!

It's aliiiiive! And so organized. *tear*

This post is basically just gonna hype up eDesign.

Because it's amazing.

AND it keeps track of coverage in the best way possible. We uploaded a master list of the school to eDesign, and now we can tag people in photos (like Facebook) and the software keeps track of which pictures are being used in spreads, as well as who is in those pictures. This makes things much, much easier when it comes to coverage, because we can see who is in the book exactly how many times. Before, we kept a physical list of people, and had to mark of names with various colored pens, and as you can imagine it was hard to keep track of.

Everything's red right now because we're still working on inputting pictures into the spreads.

Well, that's it from me for now. I'm working on figuring out actual mentorship for my topic, but if anyone has suggestions, please contact me. I'd love some input.