Yearbooks are capsules of time that students can look back on at any time to reflect on their lives at Westwood.
Number 1: Fusion
In first place comes Fusion, a pop of color and one of the most detailed and content filled yearbooks. The creators, Jenny Xu and Emily Lu efficiently showed each and every student’s unique experience at Westwood. This yearbook is like eye candy! There’s not one as colorful or eye-catching as Fusion. Moreover, it encapsulates the culture in 2019 like how Bob’s Burgers, Brooklyn Ninety, and Young Sheldon were one of the most popular shows at the time. The pictures are dramatically and sharply captured pulling in the reader and, to top it, all of the theme is unique and combines all the different facades of Westwood.
Number 2: Every Little Thing
In second place we have Every Little Thing, which encapsulates many emotional memories. This yearbook focuses more on content than the aesthetic of the book. Which I felt like made it really stand out compared to other books. Daphne Longenbach and Amelia Spielman put their sweat and tears into making sure this yearbook was going to move others. Even when this yearbook is based on details of people at Westwood, the aesthetic did not fail at all either. Mods pop out to your eyes and never fail to draw you in.
Number 3: The Heritage 1982
Third place goes to the Heritage yearbook from 1982, which is the first Westwood yearbook ever created. The list wouldn’t be complete without this yearbook because it is the start of all collections of Westwood memories. This yearbook also holds a lot of comedic moments and is sure to give you a laugh if you ever get to read it. With it being a yearbook from the 80’s it would be presumable that it is in all black and white, but surprisingly, many pages are colored! It’s also just super interesting to go back to old yearbooks and see how people from different times dressed and used their vocabulary.
Number 4: Outlines
Fourth place in this ranking goes to Outlines from 2009. This yearbook is the first yearbook in all Westwood history to be in complete color. All the yearbooks beforehand had a mix of both black and white, but we felt this book would be influential to put on this ranking because of its iconic stance of being the first yearbook in full color. This was definitely more of a big deal back then compared to now, but we still appreciate that Westwood worked very hard to make sure this was the first yearbook in complete color.
Number 5: Vision
Fifth place in this list goes to Vision from 2020. The concept of this yearbook was very interesting. The editors of the yearbook came up with the idea to make the pictures almost blurry, but provide blue and red glasses inside the yearbook to wear whenever you look at the photos, which made them clear. Although it is a cool concept, it’s hard not to cringe whenever you see the images and to some people, the point could be hard to get across that you have to wear the glasses when looking at the photos. The color scheme of the photos was a red and bluish green, which was interesting though. Although the concept is very cool, the vibes of this yearbook are just overall sometimes cringe which is the reason it’s at the bottom of this list.
