6. SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS
Imagine a college yearbook wherein the students, banding together, bust out of the rectangles in which their faces would otherwise sit, row after mind-numbing row. The raucous portraiture in the SVA yearbook—run by faculty member and creative director Genevieve Williams with a select group of seniors—features SVA students in full-page, full-body, and most critically, fully expressed poses. Using the work of three photographers, the four-person design team incorporated hundreds of portraits in an eclectic series of layouts.

Historically, the yearbook genre offers more in the way of the sophomoric than the sophisticated; this one debunks that notion, representing SVA’s visual intelligence. The theme of “Cycles,” which runs throughout the book, reflects “not only the four-year cycle,” explains Williams, “but the transitions from student life to that of an artist, from consumer of education to a commodity in the marketplace.”

Featuring a washing machine, an acetate book jacket—when removed—reveals a spliced tree trunk and its growth rings. The theme provided cohesion, a challenging prospect in a work with so much stylistic variance. But the long hours required proved as taxing. “Editing sessions,” says Chris Spooner, “didn’t end so much as they were walked away from. People would have filed missing-persons reports if we hadn’t.”
Tiffany Meyers