During the summer of 2024 to 2025, I headed the construction of the 2025 Illio — “Evolving Nostalgia,” as Editor-in-Chief. The book contains over 270 pages covering campus life of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign centered around the notion of what evolves as nostalgic memory. As each student within the class of 2025 graduates from the University, with time, this core moment in each of their lives will evolve in to a memory to look back upon within the pages of the book.
Notable points of coverage present in Evolving Nostalgia include, the 47th United States presidential election, Charlie Kirk and Hulk Hogan on-campus prior to their passings, Roger Ebert film festival, new local businesses, campus activism, and the university's Chancellor’s final academic term.

The book was finalized in the summer of 2025 and shipped out to hundreds of students and customers in the fall and is available for purchase here.

The Illio has been the University’s official yearbook publication since 1895 and is produced from the Illini Media Company, an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Champaign-Urbana.  

The copy & reporting team alongside the staff of photojournalists put in the heavy work of providing coverage encapsulating the year and the contents of the book. Staff from both the photo department and copy & reporting team underwent workshops and presentations held from professionals within the field and company alumni. Each department head were under the guise to build and teach their team during their term within their position. Copy & reporting staff alongside photographers were taught AP-Style training and received a “Illio-Style Guide” made by Copy & Reporting Editor Charlotte Ernst to reference to for language to be used within reporting and copy-editing of the book. 

Coming from a background in photography, I held additional duties of managing and training the photo department alongside the role of Editor-in-Chief to ensure improvement and proper coverage was being pursued while producing the book and transforming internal operations of the book. Within my time in the role, I authored a company-wide photo policy ensuring staff adhere to expectations and fair ownership rights was met between staff and the Illini Media Company.  

Photo staff from the Illio held responsibility for providing the bulk of on-site reporting and visual coverage. Photographers underwent group critique sessions throughout the year of production alongside visual training. Staff were able to build experience within a wide array of beats and mediums of photography including: Spot News, Politics, Sports, Entertainment, Portraiture/Feature, Studio, and more all while adhering to photo-standards developed by the National Press Photography Association (NPPA).  

As the year progressed, management responsibilities were transferred to Assistant Photo Editor Isaac Pinkus, taking on the role of Photo Editor, and Sam Rink, Assistant Photo Editor, formerly staff Senior Photographer. 

After selecting a theme of the book early in production, Assistant Editor Rinnell Borges and Graphic Design Editor Sebastian Holt worked on creating concepts for the cover of the book. Numerous critique sessions were held Illini Media CEO Jake Williams and Illio Editor-in-Chief, myself, until the final cover was selected.

The design team put effort to creating layout for the sections within the book that align with a retro-futurism aesthetic, such as seen with the cover of the book. Designers spent time creating illustrations furthering the theme as well as portraying campus icons to be dispersed throughout the pages, bringing all 270-pages together for a final book documentation for the 2024-2025 year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.