GRAND MEADOW — The yearbook is a high school institution; memories in a binding that students take with them from year to year.

It’s also a source of pride for those students who take part in producing each year’s book. It’s not easy and sometimes can seem more like a job than an activity.

However, there is only so far the students and their advisors can take a book with most schools opting to send their pages out for further design, with fancy graphics and ornate covers.

In Grand Meadow, though, there is an example of students not only getting more hands-on experience with creating their own yearbooks, but saving money as well.

Three years ago, Grand Meadow decided to take their yearbook creation almost entirely into its own hands, sending the books when completed to a printer in the Twin Cities.

“We were struggling,” said Jeff Oian, director of technology with Grand Meadow and business education teacher. “We were going through (companies), but we had to buy X number of books and spend X number of dollars. We were losing a couple thousand dollars a year.”

With that kind of money leaving the school, there was the very real possibility of having to end the yearbook.

That’s when the idea for creating the yearbook in-house was floated by Oian to superintendent Joe Brown.

“The previous way we did it was a real money loser,” Brown said. “It didn’t take a lot of convincing.”

It was a bold step. Computer programs needed to be purchased and perhaps more challenging, the programs had to be taught to the students who would be taking part in the project. The school purchased InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and a lesser known freeware photo application called Gimp and Adobe Illustrator. For one year as freshman and sophomores, during the time the yearbook was put together, the students received a course on the programs. It was a preliminary understanding of the basics.

After that, it was up to those interested students to take responsibility for their education in these programs. Several books on the programs were purchased as well and students were given the opportunity to work through an independent studies program.

Many students took to the idea immediately, leaving no shortage of ideas in which way the yearbook went. Design, color, layout and what was included in the yearbook lay largely with the students, with Oian making the final decisions of which versions of various pages went into the yearbook. Something that even he admits was not always that easy as the student’s talents progressed.

On the surface, not much had changed or looked that different from what other schools were doing, but it put more control of the final project in Grand Meadow student’s hands. Printing of the pages went to Diamond Ridge Printing in Austin, while the binding went to E & L Bindery in St. Paul.

The end result is a book that is fully organized and designed by the students, with color on every page, and less money spent.

“We were losing three to four thousand a year,” Brown said. “It’s been about a $5,000 turnaround.”

“One thing we’ve noticed, is that most everyone buys one,” Brown said. “The kids are actually producing the yearbook. Here they are actually producing a product. It’s a keepsake.”

Another benefit of the students taking on the skills they need to produce the yearbook themselves, is the continued desire to improve the product. Sophomore Paul Johnson got involved last year, mostly on the photo end of the yearbook and takes a vast majority of the photos seen in the final product.

“I like just every part of taking pictures,” Paul said. “I would like to see increasing quality in the pictures and my own skills and editing the pictures and make sure the yearbooks aren’t always the same.”

The programs used by the students: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Gimp aren’t programs easily picked up. There’s a learning curve in dealing with them for the first time. Items rarely look the way a person wants right away, and the tools in the programs sometimes don’t work the way we would like.

However, many of the students under Oian’s advisory have taken to the programs like the preverbal fish taking to water.

“They love Photoshop,” Oian said laughing then later added, “I hope the kids want to keep doing this, it’s really where the future is.”

With the students themselves, it’s not so much a specific thing as it is just a general understanding that they enjoy it.

Kyle Freese, a junior, and his brother sophomore Karl Freese have both worked on the yearbook and it’s the general hands-on experience that draws them.

“I just like using Photoshop, editing and laying out the pages,” Kyle said. “Fix them up.”

There is also an added teaching element that comes from the advanced students themselves. When the freshman and sophomore first-timers to the program put together their pages, the advanced students will go over them and touch certain elements up.

“It’s fun,” junior Jordan Simonson said.

Simonson is one of the advanced students who took quickly to working on yearbook and with the programs needed.

“I really like doing things like this,” she said admitting InDesign is the program she specializes in more. “It comes naturally to me to create things like this.”

There is another benefit to doing a majority of the yearbook under the domes of Grand Meadow. A flexibility with what can go in a yearbook. There are the usual elements: clubs and sports teams, classes, extra-curriculars and things like this.

But in Grand Meadow you can also find pages like the one included last year: a page on vehicles driven by the student body, put together by senior Ethan Casady.

“I’’m a car nut, and I wanted to take on a car page,” he said. “So I designed a car page.”

Ultimately there is the money saved on this venture and with that extra money the school can look at buying more technology and look more to the future.

“What they’ve done has made enough profit so they can go out and buy digital cameras,” Brown said. “I think it’s possible that the next phase is going to be more video. I can see students getting a twofer, a yearbook and DVD.”

“I just hope to continue learning,” Oian said. “Continually get better to make sure this continues to be profitable. We’ve heard so many good things from the parents.”