It's one of those things that is just so obvious that you don't think of it.
We're supposed to come up with an idea for a two-page spread for the yearbook, and we need to have a proposal in for tomorrow. All class I was looking at old yearbooks, at prize winning yearbooks, and just generally wracking my brain for an idea.
The trouble is, I want to have something that means something to people when they get their book in June. And it needs to still mean something twenty Junes from now!
There's the obvious sort of stuff. A page about musicians in the school, what do you for lunch, best friends forever. Stuff that's you can find in any old yearbook. I don't want to do something that's been done a million times before. And it needs to mean something.
I had the great idea that I should ask people to draw their self portrait, and we'd put it in the yearbook along with a photograph of themselves. You would have people who are great at drawing and people who really suck, and it would be cool!
But then… Michelle was already doing a page on art. I don't really want two pages on basically the same thing. It's like overpowering art and leaving out the non artistes.
Then I figured just fall back on the old music page. Get a nice picture of someone rocking out on a guitar and cut it out, make it pop. But it's so not exciting! And plus, someone else had already claimed it. Technically, I could do the same thing and the teacher would pick which proposal he liked better, and I'm fairly confident I could have the better one if I really wanted. But the fact that someone else thought of it shows how unoriginal it is.
But now, at home, contemplating what to do, I realize I don't need to have a whole page of self-portraits. I can incorporate other things in it too! But what is the theme of said page, you ask?
Who are you?
Who who, who who, indeed.
So we've got the self-portraits. How else do we express who we are? I can interview people and ask them to sum themselves up in a word. Or in a song! Or the TV show that best describes their life! Maybe their favourite piece of clothing that shows who they are!
All these ideas were kind of floating around in my head all along. I thought I could do a page on what TV show people think most reflects life at our school, but then I thought ehh, not enough, and plus, someone else is doing a page about television. There's that overlap again.
And then I thought fashion, yeah! But again, it's been done.
And while I am sure that the "who are you?" theme has been done before, it just works. The whole Who thing, you know? It's a sign, I tell you.