A glossy new book is sure to be on every St. John desk and night stand this week.
With a sleek new look and cover art inspired by a favorite island artist, the ninth edition of the St. John Phonebook will hit Love City shores this week.
The cover’s bright colors and a whimsical design will be immediately recognizable to everyone on St. John as that of Annie “Love” Higham’s work.
Higham, who died in a car accident earlier this year, was in the process of designing her third St. John Phonebook cover when the accident occurred. Fellow St. John artists stepped in to pick up where Higham left off, explained Julie Slodden, St. John Phonebook supervisor.
“Annie was in the process of doing the cover art and actually dropped off a sketch of her design the day before she died,” said Slodden. “After the accident, Cheryl Geller and Arlene Hitchcock went in and finished the sketch for us. They did in Annie’s vein, so it’s really whimsical and colorful and bright.”
“It’s both for Annie and a tribute to Annie,” Slodden said.
A brightly-colored Mocko Jumbie and playful designs make the phonebook cover distinctly Higham’s style. A corner of the picture depicts a woman and two dogs with angle wings, is a touching tribute to the late artists and her pets.
From the very special cover to the new glossy pages in the white pages section and full color yellow pages, the 2010 island phonebook is the most impressive to date.
“This is our ninth year and I think this edition is absolutely the best one that we’ve put out,” said Slodden. “We have brighter colors and the glossy paper throughout the book. We just wanted it to pop a little bit more.”
After releasing the 2009 phone book in January, the St. John Phonebook staff listened to requests for an earlier release this year, Slodden added.
“Last year we were about a month behind and we didn’t want that to happen again so worked we really hard and got things started early so we could be out in the beginning of November,” she said. “People wanted the book out early this year and we listened and put the book out earlier.”
In conjunction with the release of their ninth island directory, St. John Phonebook is also launching a new website by this week.
Designed by Fore, the new site, www.theislandbook.com/directory, will be similar to well-known stateside directory websites, with full listings and links to advertisers’ websites, Slodden explained.
“We also have a great new website coming out that will be like yellowpages.com,” said Slodden. “The site is broken down into categories and will let you look up people’s names and link right to our advertisers’ websites. We’re really excited about that.”
While the site was still under construction as of press time, it was scheduled to be complete this week. So check out www.theislandbook.com/directory and keep an eye out for the 2010 St. John Phonebook.
For more information call Slodden at 227-2959 or 779-4490.