The end of a year marked by numerous significant changes around the school is fast approaching. What better way to remember this year for the ages than with a yearbook? The highly-anticipated annual Whigrean (formerly Windigo) Distribution Date will be on Friday, May 25 this year. Readers can look forward to a new and ambitious format for this year’s edition.

“It’s a way different yearbook compared to what we’ve always done,” senior Precious Ayelomi said. The main difference is in how content is organized. “This year, instead of sections, we’re doing it chronologically. It’s by what’s happening every week,” Ayelomi said. “It’s more fresh and up-to-date. A lot of other school yearbooks are doing it as well,” senior Eleanor Scott said of the layout. This new layout allows Whigrean to be more flexible with their coverage than they have been in the past. “In past years we haven’t really reflected anything that’s been happening in the world, it’s mostly been centralized around Edina High School, but we’re covering things this year like political issues and social media things that have been happening,” Scott said. “We talk about finstas and stuff that’s more relevant than just covering simply sports, or clubs, or classes,” Scott said. Weekly coverage allows each page to address the most relevant topics possible and helps the end product live up to the name of “yearbook.”

Of course, departing from a tried-and-true layout formula and building a new one from the ground up is no easy feat. Covering each week of the year means that many more photos are needed than in the past. “Being the Photography Editor, I have to meet with our advisor, Ellen Guerin, every Monday morning to check what’s happening during that week so we can send photographers out to go capture them,” Ayelomi said. With so many moments to cover, it’s crucial that the staff pays attention to detail and is careful to get everything they need. “When we miss photos, it’s very bad, so we have to look for alternatives,” Ayelomi said. Once all of those photos are captured, they need to be laid out in a clear way to tell the story of each week–a hard job for the editing staff. However, they’ve taken on the challenge without missing a beat. “Our staff has been amazing with accepting all these changes because as an editing staff we’ve thrown a lot their way but they’ve been great,” Scott said.

Covering the year as it unfolds also limits the staff’s ability to plan things ahead of time. “A lot of people don’t know but we start the book at the end of the past school year, so we started in May, and because we did chronological we didn’t really think out all the different bits and pieces of it and it’s actually more technical than we thought,” Scott said. This new way of doing things is certainly more work-intensive than the previous style of yearbook was. “It’s definitely a bigger process than we’ve done in past years,” Scott said.

Many different factors played into the staff’s decision to change their layout. “We definitely took the book in a new direction this year,” Scott said. The changing culture of EHS was a major influence in their decision. “With Principal Beaton coming in, and our senior class being the first to welcome the freshmen, we thought that if there’s any time that we should be changing the book, it should be now. So much is changing within the school, why not change with it?” Scott said. Ideas for how to change the book were driven by a desire to improve the end product and remain innovative. “We saw some award-winning yearbooks last summer when we were talking before the year began and we decided we should change a bit so people could enjoy the book more and involve students more,” Ayelomi said.

The yearbook will cover every aspect of a tumultuous year, and the Whigrean staff is eager to share it with the student body. In particular, Scott is excited to watch how students react to the front cover. “I’m really excited for the cover. We definitely worked super hard on it. We actually redid it several times because we didn’t like how it came out so I’m hoping that the student body likes it. I personally think it’s really cool, but we’ll see what you guys think,” Scott said. Ayelomi is excited to share the result of a lot of hard work and significant changes as well. “People should be looking forward to it because we put a lot of effort into it. There’s a lot of design changes and a more fun layout ideas that are more modern. I’m excited about that,” Ayelomi said. As Distribution Day draws nearer, anticipation will build for this new and exciting take on what a high school yearbook should represent.