Yearbook heroes

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Few educators willingly take on the yearbook. Greg is one. As a member of the House of Slytherin, he used his resourcefulness to find Treering Yearbooks and make us work for him, not the other way around. He left his previous yearbook companies, frustrated with diminishing print quality and leftover books. Now, because the books arrive before school lets out, Greg’s working to build a yearbook culture at Apprentice Academy.

How do you define yearbook culture?

Building a yearbook culture is difficult. Our old publisher delivered them late every year, so there was never a signing day. This year, I have the first-ever yearbook class. It restored my passion for yearbook. 

The theme was a hit; the cover looked like an iPad. The students reported on more than portraits and sports. There were spreads devoted to style, music, pop culture, and siblings. They used the yearbook to define what makes an Apprentice an Apprentice. They captured the CTE essence of our school culture. 

We still have a ways to go. Mainly middle schoolers and seniors bought yearbooks. I want to get more books in the hands of freshmen through juniors.

What did you do to make your first in-school distribution special?

All the seniors received their books at Senior Breakfast. And one of the seniors that was with us for four years came up to me and said, “Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. We've never got a book before the end of school.”

My son was also a senior this year, so it was cool for him. They all sat around at breakfast, looking through the books, laughing, looking at the pictures, and seeing the superlatives—that made me feel amazing.

I want kids to have access to their year. Something I’ve done for years is a Video Yearbook. It’s a slideshow of behind-the-scenes footage. Students came in and we handed out popsicles while they watched it. The yearbook staff introduces each section and students see photos from their book. They also see outtakes. It is really for the kids who cannot afford a book. They watch it with their friends. I hand out autograph sheets, so if they order a book after the deadline, they can slip it in the back.

How do you structure your staff?

We have a semester system at our school; the kids end up with eight classes a year. So I said, let's do Yearbook 1 in the fall and Yearbook 2 in the spring. It worked out really well. I feel like it's one of the best teams I ever advised, and the website was very straightforward. I use the Treering curriculum modules; with the quizzes at the end, it’s easy documentation for the district CTE.

How else does Treering help?

I should be stressed, but I’m not. Treering handles the trifecta of yearbook stressors: money, minimums, and ad sales. The cool thing about Treering is there are no high-pressure sales, and there is help when I need it. I didn’t need to negotiate a contract because pricing is upfront and haggle-free. It’s like CarMax. Before switching, I had additional cost centers I never saw until the final invoice. 

Treering even gives families two pages.

Let’s talk about that. Some high schools do not offer custom pages to their students.

We look at it like it’s a free ad. Our parents loved the custom pages and bought more after their first two free. It was crazy. They love them. I sent emails home and taught the students how to customize their books. Even the school staff helped and shared them.

I briefly review custom pages because our name is on the cover. It’s also a safety lesson: I remind the students this will be somewhere on the internet. Yes, I can see them. People from Treering see them. Never post anything anywhere that you would want anybody else to see.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks. 

When the yearbook adviser left St. Francis, a new teacher inherited the job. Then another. And another. Then, it was Tina Schumacher’s turn. She inherited unsold books and a program that was in the red. School leadership charged her with getting the yearbook program out of debt.

What did you discover when you became the adviser?

With our previous publisher, you had to sell a minimum number of books. And we weren't always selling that minimum, but we had to buy that many. In a closet at the school is anywhere from eight to 15 yearbooks, depending on the year.  And then the kids would sell ads to go in the back, which didn’t make up the difference.

How did you turn things around?

I started hunting. I thought, there's gotta be a different way. When I found Treering, it was too good to be true. Those are the words that I said to the principal. I told her I found a way we can make our yearbooks and make money doing it. 

Our first year we did a tiered sponsorship for local businesses. We just made platinum level, gold, etc. donor levels and put a list of names of supporters rather than ads to save on pages. I told them it would probably be the last time we would ask them, and we have been out of debt ever since. I was able to buy a new camera and a couple new lenses. 

We are never in any kind of a money crunch, which is great, but on top of that we have really great books.

You create an elementary yearbook, a secondary one, and a book for the One Act. How do you balance multiple books at once?

When we started using it, the kids knew more than I did. They showed me around and taught me how to do things. I'm not necessarily the one making the high school yearbook: it's theirs, so they can do with it as they see fit provided as long as it's acceptable by me.

For eight years, I’ve made a book of still photos from our One Act; I moved that over to Treering. It's got pictures of the cast and crew working on things. It's mostly a book of the story of the play.

I think this is my fourth elementary book. Parents loved it. It started because I had too many students in journalism class and they needed something to do. I really kind of handle that book myself now.

How does Treering Yearbooks support you?

It is nice to be self-sufficient. If we continue to use this company we will not have to worry about being in debt. 

Also, if I don't know what to do or forget how to do it, I contact support and they walk me right through it and ask if I need additional help, No one acts like I should know this by now.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

While at her desk in the library, media specialist Allyson David overheard the yearbook planning among the voluntold team. She asked to help. At the time, excess yearbooks filled a storage room at Lanier School for Inquiry, Investigation, and Innovation, and the school was losing money.

How did you turn things around?

My sister is a high school yearbook adviser, and she told me to look into Treering. After I received my sample, I took all the selling points to my admin. I told him we won't have boxes of leftover books, families can customize a couple of pages in there, and we can even integrate a fundraiser. It was a no-brainer: we went from losing money to making a profit.

You went from being on a yearbook team to managing the project solo. 

As a media specialist, it naturally works; this is what we do. Since we are a Google school, teachers put pictures in a shared folder on Drive, which seamlessly integrates with Treering’s software. We have pictures throughout the year that I pull from to put in the yearbook.

I start designing with our fifth-grade ads. We sell quarter-page recognition ads to parents, grandparents, and extended families. Then I flow the portraits. The remaining pages go to school events. 

Tell me how you come up with your yearbook theme.

The yearbook theme is based on the teacher of the year. This year, it’s cactuses. The teacher of the year this year is a SPED teacher whose classroom is decorated with cactuses. When I asked her why, she said, “Cactuses are resilient, and my kids are resilient. Both have to show up and be determined to thrive.”

I reveal the theme at the beginning of the year and put the cover on all the flyers and promo materials. It helps with sales: after the reveal, I get a surge. Now, we don't reveal anything else that's in it; they'll just see the cover, but they don't see any of the spreads or anything until it comes out.

You love the Treering themes!

My favorite one was when I made “Where the Wildcats Are.” 

When we were using the other company, I would get frustrated every time I opened their design program, and I didn't look forward to working on the yearbook. With Treering, I see a theme I really like, and I envision this spread is going to look this way. It's exciting to go in there and actually see it come together. Treering is so much easier to use to resize pictures and change the shapes of graphics.

Something else I love about Treering is I have until April to get it together. Before, with our other company, I had to finish the yearbook in January. We have a signing day in May after lunch, so I get to hear what the students say about the book. Most of them don’t know I‘m the one who puts it together.

You’re the unsung yearbook hero.

I'm proud of that book; it doesn't bother me that they don't realize that I do it. 

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Financial constraints in college led Yearbook Hero Justin Warren to a warehouse job where he unexpectedly began a career pathway in a print shop, eventually becoming the operations manager. Rooted in his love of learning, his passion for innovation, and challenging industry standards, he moved from the print floor to directing Treering Yearbooks’ domestic, coast-to-coast print network. Early this year, Justin worked with cross-functional teams to introduce tactile elements through the Treering Heritage Collection. 

How do you respond when people tell you print is obsolete?

I’ve been told that my whole career. Something physical in someone’s hand is so valuable, even though it may sit on a shelf for a bit. It’s so much easier to pull it off the shelf to relive the memories in a beautiful, full-color book than it is to dig through your phone and find a photo you think you took seven years ago.

It’s morphed, definitely, and that’s the great thing about Treering: we’re innovators. We anticipate what the future brings while maintaining that physical connection to our memories.

Speaking of physical connection, what inspired the development of studio-designed, textured yearbook covers?

Touch is a huge component of child development. You remember something you can touch. 

One of my biggest “brings” to the company was to bring a more tactile element to our printed yearbooks. It really does bring a new dynamic. Texture has always done super well in print and is difficult to implement. I said, "We're doing this," and collaborated with our print network to create a thick, glossy polymer that extends to the end of the cover and the spine, of which we are proud. The Heritage Collection showcases the possibilities that we have in front of us. All it takes is great development and some research before we execute.

People ask all the time how we manage to have a three-week turnaround. What makes it possible?

It takes a lot of strategy. It takes a lot of preparation. It takes a lot of commitment in order to turn a digital file into a printed file, and it really comes down efficiencies. Being digital, we reduce waste and errors. If there is a problem, we can catch it immediately. We don’t have to remake or rehang plates to do a full run.

We're not going to store any inventory or print extras. Print on demand allows us to personalize and print your custom yearbook as the order comes in. That takes time. Real people look at the yearbooks (it’s not all automated) to check for quality.

Our printing network is coast-to-coast, so we are geographically positioned to service our schools with shorter transit times and increased flexibility. We are striving to be both eco-friendly and economically friendly to pass on savings to schools.

What other innovations set Treering apart?

Personalization, it’s what our thing is. Personalizations changed the world. When I first heard about it, frankly wasn't sure how, on the production side, I was going to produce it. It brought challenges and through discussions and brainstorming, we came up with a product that we can then continue to enhance. 

Portrait autoflow is another. Treering utilizes technology to solve an old school problem and be able to bring our little twist to it. Without revealing too much, this is just the beginning.

Rumor has it, that you’re also a master brewer.

My dad and I own it together. We both have full-time careers, but after work, we do sales calls and on the weekends we brew beer. No advertising. It's just literally dad and I all the way from ops to janitor. We have 30 recipes that we rotate we keep five or six going year-round. Living in the Pacific Northwest, IPAs really are the huge driver: really bitter, really floral. Those are the king of beers over here. So we have quite a few of those. We just pick and choose what we're feeling and what our customers want. I mean it's a wonderful experience and it's taught me a lot about smaller companies because I've lived in the corporate world for so long that I get to see the smaller craft of a business. It keeps me out of trouble.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

In San Mateo, California, a group of remarkable students has embarked on an extraordinary journey. Led by their passionate social sciences teacher Cristina Gutierrez, the diverse group at San Mateo Union High School Bridge program (SMUHSD Bridge) is not only learning English and striving to complete their high school education but also making history by creating their school’s inaugural yearbook.

What made you decide to start a yearbook program this year? 

We started the program so our students could have something physical to remember all the unique memories and memorable moments in our Bridge program. As they move on in life, I want them to be able to hold onto that joy. 

Our students face challenges above and beyond most high school students. Most are unaccompanied newcomers from Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico, and many come to the U.S. to flee violence or to reunite with a family member. Students range in age from 16 to 18, and 95% also work full-time to support family in their home countries. We wanted a way to empower them to showcase their experiences, culture, and dreams. 

What activities, events, and programs did you cover in the 2022-2023 yearbook? 

Every day at Bridge is different and exciting, so we tried to showcase all our diverse activities in our yearbook. We covered the fiestas we held, Independence Day for some students' home countries, Halloween, various award ceremonies, field trips, and English Learner Development classes. Our soccer league even won the championship in May! And, of course, we covered the people who make up Bridge: our staff and students. We honored our graduating seniors with recognition pages. They deserve all the accolades! 

Our school’s philosophy and teachings are grounded In Lak’ech pedagogy, a Maya affirmation that roughly translates to “you are my other me,” it focuses on prioritizing our relationships and responsibility to one another to foster a supportive learning community. We included In Lak’ech in our yearbook to memorialize our learnings. 

How did the students participate in creating the yearbook?

Our independent studies students worked together to create the yearbook. Treering’s crowdsourcing made it easy to grab photos from across the school. Working on this project was a hands-on way to teach students valuable skills like graphic design, storytelling, and photography to use later in life. It was also great to see students reminisce about our different events in the past while creating the yearbook. 

What is the most memorable thing about your yearbook?

Our program is constantly growing in numbers, and throughout the year, we are continually adding new students to our Bridge family. It’s never too late to join the program. We captured much of our year with Treering’s later deadlines, but even students who arrived in the last month of school were still thrilled to receive a copy of the yearbook and hold on to those memories. Their excitement shows how powerful a yearbook can be - it keeps students excited for future years’ memories and gives them a physical treasure to take home. 

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

As a staff member at Sycamore Academy, an online school, Yearbook Hero Lisa Ward had yearbook experience. She’s a self-proclaimed pro at the literal cut-and-paste, handcrafted memory books. As a first-year Treering user, she was excited to see students come together virtually to craft and sign each other’s books. With her daughter, Eden, she spent hours looking through templates and art in the Treering library to spark an idea for her own custom pages. The end result was the winning combination of mother-daughter talent, as Eden Will (“She’s the artist,” said Lisa) stepped in to help her mom create an entry for the People's Choice Custom Pages Design Contest.

Traditionally, custom pages put an additional spotlight on one child. Tell me about putting the spotlight on your support system. 

Eden: Mom asked for help.

Lisa: Eden drew out the layout.

Eden: It was a snapshot of the family for the year since we don’t have albums. My cousin just had a baby and now we have a record of this moment in our lives. We have family from CA, to MI, NC, different parts of TX, and OK. After it was finished, we ended up editing it for the participants to include their families so they had their own version. They’ll print for their families.

Why do you think the message of “Family Forever” resonated with hundreds of people on social media?

Eden: That was pretty awesome. The resonating thing is that we reached out to family we don’t always get to see. And they were all interested in being a part of this. It is so hard to get everyone together. The last time I saw everyone together was at my wedding. It was cool to collaborate virtually and make something that will last. Other people found that touching. We live in such a spread-out world.

Lisa: You get the occasional family settled in one place. Technology brings us together.

Eden: We participated in it, even though we weren’t physically together. It’s like we worked together to be together.

What value do custom pages give you?

Lisa: It’s especially helpful for our school. As an online school, we try to get pictures of people during spirit week wearing hats or different colors. We don’t have pictures of kids interacting because we are online. The custom pages help each parent take each and make it their own. 

Eden: Even though she’s not a parent of a student, she was able to make it a memorable for this moment in time to make it personal for her.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

One of the 18 tornadoes crossing Kentucky in December 2021, an EF-4, the deadliest tornado in the Commonwealth's history, devastated towns in the southwest corner. Pennyroyal Area Christian Home Educators of Kentucky (PACHEK) students delivered food, assisted with clean up, and served with various faith-based relief organizations in Pembroke, Mayfield, Bremen, and Dawson Springs, KY. Yearbook volunteer, pastor’s wife, and homeschool mom Lora Farrell first caught our eye when she submitted her yearbook team’s spread, detailing both the devastation and the work to right it all in the 2022 Treering Design Contest. They won second place.

How does it feel to go from second place to first?

That was really shocking because I almost didn’t even enter. I really loved the spread we entered last year and I felt there wasn’t a spread this year (yet) at the same level of my personal satisfaction. It was such a fun surprise to be a finalist.

We are leveraging the free yearbooks we won from the contest to incentivize donations for our Beta Club fundraiser. We are partnering with Funds2Orgs for a shoe drive. We collect shoes, and they pay us per pound. The shoes then help micro-entrepreneurs in developing nations build their businesses and the money we raise will help students attend Beta’s national convention.

Let’s talk design. How did PACHEK choose Groovy for their 30th anniversary book?

The students really liked the design and we wanted to do something throwback. It’s not 90s, but the 70s seem to cycle back through every 20 years or so and it just works. 

On our divider pages, we used photos from previous years along with a paragraph with a little bit of group history. The team and I reached out to older members of the community. Because we are near Ft. Campbell, there is a large, transient military population. It was tough to get some photos as a result. Most are the ones I’ve taken over the previous 12 years. We did include interviews with older members of the community since digital photos weren’t the norm back then.

How do you build a 124-page book in a homeschool environment?

Yearbook is strictly a volunteer job. We currently have four students who build the book and two moms training to take over as sponsors. As part of our campus culture, there is naturally lots of photo sharing in the group: people share at the end of the day or after a field trip—it’s automatic.

During each co-op module, we meet twice a month. Between these sessions, it’s once a month. We break down tasks throughout the year to curb procrastination. I leave notes on the spreads in the Treering app. The students are intrinsically motivated and I like to give them a little extra with parties and food during work sessions. We also do a year-end celebration when the book arrives.

What tips do you have for someone just getting started as a yearbook club adviser?

Don’t be afraid: the software is user-friendly and there are resources available. With our previous company, I had to use a lot of outside resources. In Treering, I can set margins and page styles. I love the new folder features where we can add subfolders and share between folders. 

The biggest thing is to be consistent throughout the year by managing the workload.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Single-handedly holding down the office during the pandemic, Treering engineer Box Max is one of the most senior members of the engineering team. In honor of his fifth anniversary, we wanted to celebrate how he improves the yearbook creation process on the back end. 

His teammates say he is the perfect collaborator during the debugging process because his listening skills help other engineers work through their problems. They explain the code, line by line, to Box Max and therein discover snafus. He doesn’t pass judgment, just attends. 

Serving as the voice of restraint, he doesn’t commit to action quickly or make rash code decisions (which the support team appreciates). It’s this consistency and reliability that make him an exemplary employee. 

He’s also trusted with trade secrets as Treering builds and improves our robust design platform that serves both technical and emerging designers. Tight-lipped, Box Max is trustworthy and the perfect person to hold Treering’s secrets. 

Happy April Fool’s Day from your friends at Treering!

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

As a student 17 years ago, Chris Frost helped West Valley High School transition from orange cropping pencils to InDesign. He spent three years on the yearbook staff, and in his senior year became Editor in Chief. After working for guest relations at Disneyland, he returned to the Inland Empire as a SPED aid and moved into the activities assistant role he currently holds, splitting his time between ASB and yearbook.

Tell me how your students are creating more than just a visual book this year.

It started with an idea, really. They wanted to create a Spotify-themed yearbook and it was a reality instantly because Treering has the Wrapped theme. 

It’s all about the music: on sports spreads, we have codes for athletes’ amp songs and instead of doing senior quotes, we are doing senior songs. Being able to capture a moment in a song connects those dots you don’t remember, such as the song the homecoming king and queen danced to. We are capturing that moment, so in 10, 20, 30 years students can really flashback. That’s the point of a yearbook.

Were you worried about some of the song submissions?

The team gave students parameters ahead of time. Since this is a school-published book, the standard requirement is it has to be appropriate without any foul language (radio edits only). Because it’s also a student publication, we want to maintain students’ freedom of expression.

What does your design process look like?

Our students are very independent: for example, last year, we used the Not a Diary theme and a graphic artist on campus created hand-drawn doodles throughout the yearbook. This theme resonated with students because of the nostalgia and emotion. It was healing after returning to campus from the shutdown.

The thing Billy [Valenzuela, yearbook adviser] and I enjoy about Treering’s software is you can use bits and pieces of the design library or use 100% pre-done. We are able to scaffold based on the individual yearbook students’ needs.

What other methods do you use for storytelling?

Treering’s custom pages give our students more ownership and control of their yearbook, and because we can review them before they go to print, it gave us the ease we weren’t going to randomly publish something sketchy. Some of the creativity that goes into yearbook production is passed on to students outside of the yearbook program.

How else does Treering help?

The biggest benefit to West Valley is we produce great yearbooks at a cost our kids can afford. We don’t have to increase the cost of the yearbook, and because of Treering, our book is $20-25 below other schools in the area, making it more accessible. 

Yearbook is essentially carrying on and documenting the history of the school. The enormity of that task is what motivates our students. It’s important to create something that speaks to all students, not just one grade or one class.

West Valley was with another yearbook company for 30 years. Change became necessary when we could no longer pass on savings to our students. We would pre-sell 300-400 yearbooks and still be charged for overruns. We were storing books it cost $60-70 to produce despite selling ads and fundraising to meet the contract terms.

The relationship no longer benefited our school or the students. 

When we couldn’t host a year-end pizza party for the yearbook team because there is $20 in the activities fund and a $2000 final bill, we said, “This isn’t working for us.”

It’s freeing now to have no order minimums and worries about over-shipments. 

What advice would you give to someone just getting started as a yearbook adviser?

Let them struggle a little. This is one of the hardest lessons that I think we as advisers have to learn. Often we have the urge to swoop in and support our students when they start to get frustrated. This robs them of growth opportunities. Of course guide and suggest, but let them do the hard work of getting to the answer. Ultimately it will set them up for success in the future.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Like many of us, Beth Stacy didn’t set out to be a yearbook adviser. As a special education teacher, she focused on reading intervention and built her reputation as a writing pro and Read 180 instructor. After moving from Florida to Ohio, her new principal asked her to co-teach the yearbook class because she wanted it to be more journalistic. The program was already under scrutiny: the district, concerned over a debt-burdened program, was ready to shut things down. In 2017, the team at Wayne High School moved to Treering, reducing the financial burden on the school and the stress of deadlines for the advisers.

Co-advising sounds like a dream. How do you make it work?

The business teacher and I share responsibilities. She and I split the class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She focuses on visual skill development and marketing while I teach writing and interviewing.

During the first quarter, the four seniors lead teams. They divide the sports spreads and divvy up tasks. Within their teams, they choose how to break up tasks. For example, there are 92 band members and 32 Warriorette and they have to interview them all. That team assigned instrument groups to each team member (woodwinds, brass, etc.).

Second quarter, students determine if they want to work with a partner or solo for their next spread. As the year progresses, they grow more independent.

With a school of 1800, how do you ensure coverage?

We do a big book–250 pages. Also, we use the index report to identify students who are not in the book and brainstorm open-ended questions for student profiles inspired by Humans of New York. These Humans of Wayne profiles undergo a revision and editing process before going in the book and on the Signal’s Instagram.

Because we include prom, graduation, and our track team, from which members compete each June at the state finals and potentially at nationals, Wayne High School is a fall delivery school. For the first time, we are going to use Treering’s ship-to-home option so we don’t have to plan distribution during the summer for open house.

It’s the 75 anniversary this year for their yearbook–what are you doing to make it special?

My students are finding ways to link the past to the present. One of my editors created two spreads using the previous covers. We are missing ten years and working with the alumni association and hopefully the historical society to track them down.

The first yearbook has a write-up from the original editor. We will honor the previous teams who established and maintained the yearbook tradition as well as legacy athletes since we are a big sports school. Our head football coach is a first-generation Warrior and his son is a senior. Nearly two dozen members of the faculty are alumni and will appear with their senior yearbooks.

Teaching yearbook is such a different experience than being on staff as a student. I absolutely love it, but it is one of the most fun yet difficult classes I've ever taught!

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

As a parent volunteer and part-time teacher at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School in Elk Grove, CA, Katie Thomas took over the pre-K through 8th grade yearbook, inheriting boxes of unsold books from previous years. Her first mission: to not waste people's money or the school's.

What challenges did you face as a new yearbook adviser?

Looking for a yearbook publisher that would allow us more time to complete the book so we could include spring events was a priority from the start. I also didn't want the stress of having sales quotas. Since I made the preschool pages with our previous publisher's software, I can appreciate how easy it is to create with Treering's software. That and the three-week turnaround really sold me.

At the time, I taught three-year-olds and I would transition to leading middle schoolers in the yearbook club. We started with the Treering yearbook ladder to decide what would go in the book and planned from there. It's still a work in progress on how we finalize page assignments, and for the most part, 8th-grade students create their section, and the 6th- and 7th-grade students do sports, activities, and class pages.

You sold 65 books in one week. How did you achieve that?

Really, I'm not one for pushing sales. I tapped into these existing channels to reach parents. Our school communicates through student council announcements and email blasts. When we neared our final deadline, I ensured parents knew it was the last chance to buy it for school-wide distribution, and if they waited, they'd have to pay shipping and handling. I had a handful of them. Seventy-six percent of the school community purchased books.

Also, joining Yearbook Club webinars helped. I've learned classroom management tips such as having a job board for students between projects and how to organize photos in shared folders.

What are you doing differently this year?

We started sales early and leveraged the 10% discount. We are also involving the school in choosing the look of the book: the yearbook club narrowed the themes down to five and the entire school will vote. The school’s annual motto is “Embrace Joy” and we will tie that in with the book to make it uniquely 2022-2023.

Last year, I grabbed laptops and phones to AirDrop photos to myself to upload because grades couldn't mix due to COVID protocols. I did a lot of texting to parents. This year, we are using the built-in crowdsourcing features: the students are creating their own flyers with QR codes to shared folders. The flyers say things like, “You could be featured like these photos in this year’s yearbook. Send us your back-to-school photos.”

The other big thing is I will order my printed proof sooner and try to get everything finished earlier.

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks.

Meet the man who created Treering's new color picker. Engineer Nick Pasto grew up among cherry, walnut, and apple growers in Stockton, CA. In addition to his swoon-worthy homemade lasagna (yes, Pasto makes pasta) inspired by his time studying cuisine with Italian grandmas, Nick led the teams which developed many of Treering's other editor favorites:

• Recognition ads
• Spell check
• Marking pages "done"
• Polls
• Language support for Arabic, Chinese, and Hebrew characters
• Alignment tools
• Package tracking improvements

(This is not an exhaustive list by any means.)

How did you move from the classroom to the backroom?

Back then, Treering’s design software was Flash-based, and that was going out. I saw a message that they were looking for developers to change it to HTML5. The opportunity spoke to me because there was a lot of overlap between my professional career and personal interests.

While earning my art education degree, I worked as a graphic designer and animator for my college. I’ve also been an indie game developer.

[Editor's note: Nick made Super Chibi Knight with his eight-year-old daughter who served as the voice actor for the main character; she's now 18.]

How does your background as a classroom teacher make you a better developer?

So many people who work at Treering are currently making yearbooks at their kids’ schools. I’m one of the only engineers who’s served as an adviser. It helps to have real-world experience with our product because I can see it from both sides.

The leadership at Treering looks for a breadth of experience to remain customer-focused and make the best product. The strength of our team is our diversity–our experiences help with ingenuity and problem-solving.

We build in a ton of automation and templates to make things less intimidating. You don’t have to know Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign to do desktop publishing for your yearbook design. Treering’s software is the bridge. 

If you could tell our editors anything, what would it be?

The most impressive part of Treering as a user is the customer service.

Like many first-time advisers, I missed our deadline. The pressure of making sure kids had their books before summer was stressful. As a new teacher, it was too much on my plate. 

I picked up the phone and just communicated with the CAT team and they helped me work it out by using my fundraiser to pay for expedited shipping. My students received their books on time, and I determined this is a company I am interested in learning more about. It was then I knew I wanted to work here.