Staff members of the Bruriah senior yearbook and The Bruriah Blaze spent the day at Columbia University attending the Columbia Scholastic Press Association fall conference. The budding journalists attended workshops including trends in yearbook theme, cover and design, typography and fonts and sharp angles in story ideas.
The conference proves to be, year-after-year, an exciting, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime experience that exposes students to professionals whose sole focus is to get students to see possibility, create a plan and realize the vision. Designer Rina Finkelstein (Teaneck) said of the conference “it introduced new perspectives for the direction we should take our yearbook. It was also interesting to hear about different design techniques or simple, little things that brought a whole page together.”
Rachelli Benoff (New Milford), Chana Rosenbluth (Teaneck) and Ava Weitz (Hillside), accompanied by their advisor Margueya Poupko, attended the workshops: from the top perfecting your ledes, can I use that?, systems for covering the school community, and mastering the art of the interview to help them produce informative and current issues.
“What I really enjoyed about the conference was getting to see other school’s yearbooks and gathering inspiration for our own spreads,” said Adina Brooks, (Edison) designer, of her day at Columbia. She was so inspired that after the conference she created a newly designed page using some of the design elements she learned at the conference.
Brooks and Finkelstein were joined by fellow designer Rivki Hook (Bergenfield) and editors-in-chief Michal Hager (Teaneck) and Rivka Kesler (Clifton), who said “We really enjoyed going to the conference. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience where we got to speak to yearbook and graphic-design experts. They had ideas that we’re planning on applying to our yearbook.”
The annual conference, which is held on Columbia University’s historic Morningside Heights campus in uptown Manhattan, attracts both secondary school students and faculty advisers from schools across the country. Attendees choose from more than 80 sessions, covering all aspects of student publishing. The staffs of Bruriah’s yearbook and Blaze attend the conference annually.
