2004 Video Yearbook: Los Alamitos

I can't quite remember if we got these free or if we had to pay for them.
This shirt was custom made for the group of us that were working on the video yearbook in 2004. I believe one of us designed it and we sent them out to get printed. As far as I knew, the only way to have gotten one of these shirts was to have worked on the project all year.
The quality is quite good. We were fairly strapped for a budget that year but since the labor was free and we were a non-profit I guess we were able to get these shirts cheap. Only about 30-50 were made -I think- so it wasn't too hard to keep the quality up. The shirt is classy because it makes you part of a special group, not only from the left aligned text on the front, but the text on the back makes it look like a backstage crew pass.
The design is reminiscent of the physical yearbook which was put together by another team who had been around for a very long time. Our high school's landmark out front is this big old tree. It is featured prominently on the top of the text on the front. Below the tree the text reads, "Video Yearbook" the name of the group, then, "Los Alamitos" the name of the city/school. Mixed in with the titles it says,"two thousand four" which was the year the yearbook was published and my graduating year. On the back of the shirt is the word "[STAFF]" inside brackets. Just like a real rock group's might wear or like some shirts have "SECURITY" on the back. We voted on the font because there were a few different options and, since it was a major element of the shirt, how the font looked changed the meaning and tone of it.
This was a shirt that I liked wearing to high school. The problem was that we only got these about a month or less before the year was out. Meaning we could only get recognition for the short while before graduation. Now that it has been a long time since I graduated, I still wear it from time to time. It was fun in college for a bit, I was still proud of graduating and even wore my high school ring for a year or so. Now that I'm like 6 years out of high school, I wear this around just to remind myself and bring a little school spirit wherever I go. I might not take this to a place with new people, but rather somewhere I'm meeting old friends or classmates.

The day that we all got these in Mrs. Lusk's class was awesome. I mean, getting picked to be part of the video yearbook team was awesome in itself, but, by that time, we had already done all the work and it was sent out to be manufactured. Video yearbook was similar to the AP classes in that we had to be done with it early in the year and the last few months were a lot of slacking. When we were able to wear these the yearbooks were being distributed and we got to help with that too. Basically if you saw someone who was wearing one of these you knew they had a been working hard all year for this week. The whole process was super fun and I even learned a lot. I've gone on to talk about my experiences in this group in national presentations and essays past high school. I had such a great time and urge any other schools and students to adopt programs like this one.