To many students, the yearbook only matters at the end of the year. However for members of The Imprint, ENHS’s yearbook staff, that is quite the opposite. Year round, Staff members work to collect photos, interviews, and stories to feature in the final print.
In years past, The Imprint has released book themes such as “This One Time,” and “It’s Been a Year,” and they have brought in much success.
In October, The Imprint attended the Nebraska High School Press Association convention, where they received their second ever Cornhusker Award. This award is given to the best of the best, based on a system of points regarding design, layout, and writing skills. Part of the success earned in journalism is being able to implement constructive criticism.
“This year we are working to improve caption writing,” managing editor Aubrey Bannister said. “Currently we are caption editing and they are sounding a lot better than before.”
Yearbook adviser Kelly Honz ensures that throughout the year, staff members are aware of feedback received by judges, so they are able to continue to make changes and create the best version of the yearbook.
“I spent my first years as an adviser redesigning things to make them better,” Honz said. “But I have really dialed back because this is a student publication, I’m just here to push it and make it better.”
At the state journalism competition in April 2025, current staff members Hailey Schinning and Aubrey Bannister placed first in the Yearbook Theme Development category.
“Mine and Aubrey’s faces lit up when they called second place,” Schinning said. “We were super excited and I never thought that it could happen when I first joined yearbook.”
The process of creating the yearbook begins long before the school year even starts. A couple of staff members attend “J Camp” in the summer, hosted by University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where they brainstorm, visualize, and come up with ideas for the upcoming book.
“There are a lot of ideas,” senior content editor Taryn Ferguson said. “At the beginning of the year we finally have to come together and decide what everyone wants.”
Seniors make up a majority of The Imprint’s leadership staff, so ensuring that current veterans prepare the newer members is crucial to keeping their program strong. Schinning, managing editor, is in charge of a few students to help train them on how to do tasks individually.
“My approach for new staff members is to teach them the basics of Yearbook 360 and then writing skills and basic design elements,” Schinning said.
Senior Co-Editors in Chief Kahlen Aurich and Maddy Brettmann oversee a majority of the operations that occur from day to day.
“I enjoy looking over spreads and taking time out of my day to look and make sure everything is consistent,” Aurich said.
Brettmann also manages other tasks on top of keeping the staff on track.
“It’s a lot in one day,” Brettmann said. “I do a little bit with social media and then sometimes I’ll be interviewing or working on the next spread.”
Most of the time, members are working together to create spreads. These spreads contain various sports, school activities, and relevant stories about students and events throughout the building.
“Coverage is really important,” Honz said. “One of the strengths of our yearbook is being conscious of different angles, and trying to find secondary stories.”
Yearbook takes hours of dedication outside of class in order to finish spreads on time, get pictures, interviews, and edit to ensure no mistakes were made. Many staff members take the time to review their work, and almost always the first attempt isn’t what goes in the final product.
All of the hard work and small components come together at the end of the year to be combined into final copies and be distributed to the student body.
“It’s like Christmas, and birthdays, and New Year’s all rolled into one,” Honz said. “It is the best box to open at the end of the year and you can’t wait for people to see it.”
