NAPLES – While the pages of a high school yearbook can spark memories decades after graduation, the front cover of the typical yearbook is rarely memorable.

Not so for this year’s class of graduating seniors at Lake Region High School in Naples. Thanks to the skills and imagination of their classmate, Emma Rickert, graduates will have a colorful and artistic yearbook cover protecting their high school memories.

Rickert, a Bridgton resident, has been an artist “forever,” often sitting down to draw with her father, Tom Rickert, a graphic designer by trade. Voted most artistic in her class this year, Rickert’s reputation prompted Yearbook Club adviser Jessie Toohey to ask her in September to submit a potential cover based on the theme, “New Beginnings from Old Roots.”

Rickert spent some time thinking about how she would illustrate the theme, and then took two days on her computer using Photoshop to “draw” a mixture of colorful planets and layers of background color, with a dabbling of scribbling offering a different twist.

“First I did the watercolor for the background, and then I scanned it into the computer. And then in Photoshop put the layers over top of it,” explained Rickert. “I built it up that way, layer on layer.”

The focal point of the cover is a circle (not a planet, Rickert said) with a huge tree coming out of it, its roots wrapping around the sphere. Upon closer inspection, the lush and fluffy green tree is growing out of a brown stump.

“The theme is ‘New Beginnings from Old Roots,’ so we wanted a tree growing out of where an old tree was, and then I just decided to go with the planets,” she said.

Toohey was impressed with Rickert’s final product, saying it perfectly represents the year Lake Region went through in the wake of being listed as one of Maine’s 10 lowest-performing schools in spring 2010.

“We had a lot of changes this year,” Toohey said. “We have a new principal. We took the school improvement grant money. We knew we were having all the renovations on the outside and the inside, so that was the theme the students had picked last year, and Emma embraced it and ran with it.”

While much of the artwork is colorful, Rickert worked in some simple sketches of shapes and lines as well as some handwriting.

“In the beginning, (the doodles) were only supposed to be space fillers, but I liked how it turned out because it’s high school and people usually doodle in their notebooks,” she said. “I also wanted to keep it cartoon-y since we’re still just kids and stuff, so I wanted to keep it simple.”

Toohey describes Rickert’s handwriting scribbled among the colors as “graffiti-esque, very youthful and very appropriate for the age group.”

After graduation, Rickert will pursue a career in art. She’s been accepted to Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where she plans to study graphic design and illustration, a career track for which her art teacher Cindy Worcester says she’s more than ready.

“Emma works diligently,” Worcester said. “She will start something and if it’s not right, she’s willing to rework it and rework it. And that, I find, is really something to commend. Because a lot of times you do something and you finish it and you leave it. But she wants something done right, and she’ll follow it through to the end.”

Students have also taken to the colorful and unique cover for their yearbooks. Rickert said many of her classmates have thanked her for it.

“Kids are coming up to me and saying they like how it’s more of a unique cover than usual,” Rickert said. “And I think it’s something I’ll look back on and be proud of, too.”

And the cover has also boosted sales of the yearbook. Before the yearbooks were available, Toohey posted a full-size copy of Rickert’s cover on a bulletin board in a hallway of the school. But the cover was papered-over and could only be revealed according to the percentage of the class that bought copies. As sales of the book increased, Toohey would tear away bits of the paper to reveal more of the design.

“What that did was make people want to buy the book even more, so they could see more of the cover revealed,” Toohey said.

The 2011 yearbook marks the third straight edition with a cover different than most schools. The 2009 edition featured cheering students, while the 2010 book showed a camera on a tripod capturing a scenic photo on the front and the student body on the back.

Toohey, who’s in her seventh year advising the Yearbook Club, said she will likely continue with original artwork on the front cover in coming years.

“This was the third year we had unique art on the front cover, and it’s been hugely successful,” Toohey said. “And people really seem to like it, so I think it’s becoming a tradition.”

The art for the yearbook cover for Lake Region High School class of 2011 is courtesy of senior Emma Rickert, left, who plans to attend Massachusetts College of Art in September. Yearbook adviser Jessie Toohey, right, says the book cover helped with sales and distinguishes Lake Region’s yearbook. (Staff photo by John Balentine)
Using the theme of “New Beginnings from Old Roots,” graduating senior Emma Rickert, of Bridgton, designed this year’s Lake Region High School yearbook. (Courtesy image)