Staff members for Texas A&M’s 2013 Aggieland yearbook received 13 Gold Circle Awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s national yearbook competition.
Kalee Bumguardner, 2013 Aggieland editor-in-chief, said many universities apply for awards in categories such as design, writing and photography.
Bumguardner said the Aggieland has historically done well in this award competition and that it was great to see the staff’s hard work continue to get recognized.
Part of this hard work entailed experimentation. Bumguardner said she was excited to try something new and modern for the Aggieland 2013 and said the cover, rather than being traditional leather, was made in a more stylistic fashion.
“The award that I was proudest of was our second place in the cover because we did something new with our cover this year, and I was just really glad the Press Association liked it as well,” Bumguardner said.
Bumguardner said the sports pages of Aggieland 2013 also got recognized overall for their design.
Bumguardner said although Aggieland didn’t get to the finals in the overall book category, she is proud of the categories in which Aggieland did receive awards.
“We did much better in the individual awards than a lot of the books that won the overall award did,” Bumguardner said. “It’s different judging so you never know how you’re going to do, but I was just really glad that we were able to get recognized in some of the individual categories.”
Bumguardner said it was definitely a team effort in getting these awards and said she couldn’t have done it without her assistant editor, now editor-in-chief, Ashley Hildebrandt.
“We put in a lot of hard hours over the summer, and it’s just nice that we get to be recognized, for the whole staff in general,” Hildebrandt said. “It’s just a reinforcement that we are on the right track and doing the right things, so it’s nice to see that from outside.”
Hildebrandt said Bumguardner was a great leader who tried to take Aggieland 2013 in a different direction, getting different angles on stories, different styles for designs and for photo layouts.
“Her whole idea going into this book was to just make it different than what we had done before, and she succeeded in doing that,” Hildebrant said. “As far as the award goes, I think it proves that she had the right thing in mind with moving the book forward.”
Shelby Olive, current Aggieland assistant editor, said she looks forward to Aggieland’s continuing progress and that she thinks the best way for forward momentum is for Aggieland to continue to do its best to reflect the evolving A&M campus.
Olive said that as the University moves forward, so too does the Aggieland and said recent changes on campus – namely the move to the SEC and reopening of the MSC – have brought attention to Aggieland.
“It really captures the movements this University has made in general, which was something that was really in our minds with these new renovations and we specifically mention that in our theme,” Olive said.