Elegant Island Living/Annaliese Kondo
Everyone has heard the phrase, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I like sitting in a chair on the beach and was a lifeguard one summer, but I never thought I could make a career out of it. Then I read about Daniel Douglas, a lifeguard in Los Angeles who earned $510,283 in 2021. And it’s not only about the cash compensation. After 30 years of service, LA lifeguards can retire as young as 55 on 79-percent of their pay. No wonder Baywatch was such a popular show back in the day! I wonder, though, what Daniel will do once he retires. He can’t just go sit in a chair on the beach. That would be “work.” Maybe he will start going to an office and sit behind a desk.
The Darkroom Photography
For the past twenty years I’ve had the best “job” and I don’t have an office or a desk to sit behind. In August 2002 I published the first edition of Elegant Island Homes and Communities which was a real estate magazine featuring high end homes for sale in Glynn County. Shortly thereafter I changed the name to Elegant Island Living and turned it into a lifestyle magazine. From the very beginning our goal has always been to highlight the local people, businesses, retail stores, restaurants and activities that make our community such a wonderful place to live. We have strived to provide our readers with articles that inform, enlighten, and, hopefully, entertain. I am particularly proud of our coverage of local nonprofit organizations through the years. There are literally hundreds of nonprofits in the Golden Isles who provide important services in our community and are in need of support. At EIL, we do our best to raise awareness about them, bring attention to their needs, and promote any events and fundraisers they are having. When we can actively participate in their events as partners and sponsors, we do that as well.
Our content’s focus is articles that are pertinent to living, working, and playing on the island. You have lemon trees in your back yard? Let’s find out more about them! You love to see the latest fashions from our local retailers? We’ll pull in some people from the community to model them in a photo shoot. You collect recipes? We can supply those for every meal or occasion you can think of, and some you haven’t!
The goal each month is to provide our readers with the most up to date information about things happening on or around the island. We want to make sure you don’t miss out on community events and the types of happenings that make living here so much fun. What we discovered over the years is that we can’t always do that best in print, because of our early deadlines to get to the printer. So we increased our digital presence and social media interaction. And as social media has grown and evolved, we have grown and evolved with it. Now we can reach you on whatever platform you choose to get your information. Our weekly email newsletter, the EIL Insider, is a great way to stay informed about events, find out about great sales or specials at local businesses and restaurants, and where to go for live music.
Producing the print magazine each month is somewhat like having a 100+ page term paper due every three weeks. And just like in college, our term paper has a strict deadline that must be met each month. Our production schedule is two weeks of organized chaos from the first day of the month up to the 15th when the issue is uploaded to the printer via the internet. Imagine the I Love Lucy chocolate factory scene where the candy conveyor belt starts to speed up, and that’s us at work! I won’t say that anybody is actually stuffing their cheeks with chocolate as we approach deadline, but I do work with women.
In truth, our process is a well-oiled machine. First, we come up with an overall theme for an upcoming issue. Sometimes that’s planned out far in advance with an editorial calendar, like our annual Home & Garden issue. Other times it might be driven by a community event, like the Christ Church Tour of Homes or the Coastal Symphony of Georgia’s Cabaret fundraiser. Usually, the themes will be somewhat seasonal. Spring and summer months tend to have an outdoor feeling, while fall and winter features lean more toward home and hearth. Once a theme has been decided, we look to incorporate as many local angles as possible. A recent fashion shoot we did in the garden at Musgrove Retreat is a good example of how we showcase some of the island’s historic treasures. Once all the month’s retail advertisements come in from our sales staff, all photos for the issue are received, and all the articles are written and submissions are edited, a page plan is created to encompass all of that into a single issue. Now the Art Director, Production Manager, and Editorial Director begin laying out the design.
Advertisements are placed alongside articles, Social Scene pages are laid out, as well as content for other departments like Business Buzz and What’s Happening. Now the magazine starts to come alive. The Real Estate section is added, and then we’re ready to go! And while we have been doing this for twenty years, occasionally there are last minute issues during the final editing and production process. Most are easily fixed, such as replacing a photo, moving an ad, or catching a misspelled name. If we are cutting it close to deadline (like at this moment, as I am trying to finish this article), I tend to have a recurring nightmare. The dream is always the same. I am my current age, but I am somehow back in L.A., waiting tables in the same restaurant where I worked when I was a starving actor in the early 90s. I am trying to put an order in on the computer, but I can’t remember how to work the computer. Meanwhile, the hostess keeps seating my section with new customers. I can’t get to the new customers because I need to get the food out to my current tables. But I can’t get the order in for the food because I can’t remember how to use the computer. I’ve had that dream so many times that even though I’m IN the dream and KNOW it’s not real, I still wake up in cold sweat! By the fourteenth of the month, the magazine is proofread once again from cover to back page and then uploaded on the fifteenth to the printer. Occasionally, based on the way the weeks of a month fall, it may be a few days earlier than that, but rarely is it any later than the fifteenth. There’s a day or two of recovery and then the “behind-the-scenes” task of taking all the content prepared for the print issue, uploading it and redesigning it so that it looks good on our website. The sales staff is already back at work getting advertisements for the next issue, and pre-production for the next month begins. And while all that is going on, our social media never sleeps.
Maybe the next time I have that dream that I’m back in L.A. I’ll quit the waiter job and go be a lifeguard! By the time I could retire I’d be 90, but who cares!
Favorite Publisher's Letters
For some reason, folks seem to enjoy the Publisher’s Letter each month. I decided when I first began writing these that I wouldn’t do the traditional thing and talk about the articles that were in the magazine, because people would be reading the magazine and would find out soon enough what was in there, so it didn’t really make sense to rehash it. Instead, I enjoy observational writing. Sometimes I have something specific in mind as a topic, but not always, so I’m never quite sure what is going to turn up on my Mac screen once I sit down to write. So, since we are celebrating twenty years, we’ve picked out a few of our favorite Publisher’s Letters from the past to share.
In “You Can't Buy Happiness But You Can Buy a Boat,” David reminisced about boat days and offered some tips on how to be a good boat guest.
In “Get Out and Vote,” David suggested that we all vote by volunteering. “Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.”
In “If I’m Not Back in Five Minutes, Just Wait Longer,” David shared some of his Dad's "unique" sayings as well as some other funny phrases you might want to slip into your conversations.
People who grew up on St. Simons Island always share what a great place it was to be a kid, especially during the summer. David is no exception, take a step back in time, with him in “Back Then…”
Always one to encourage and motivate, David gave some great suggestions on starting the year off using 30-day challenges instead of New Year’s Resolutions in “A New You - 30 Days at a Time.”
In “Spring Break for Adults,” David compared Spring Break as a kid to Spring Break as an adult, and wished he was a kid again!
Bear, David’s Newfoundland, is a frequent topic of his Publisher’s Letters and here David shared “Five Life Lessons I Learned from My Dog.”
Like the rest of the world, David was optimistic about the future and looking forward to starting 2021 fresh and putting 2020 behind us in “Hindsight is 2020.”
Since the June 2021 issue offered a dog’s-eye view of the island, as EIL’s top dog, Bear took over the Publisher’s Letter in “Who’s the Boss.” Readers loved hearing what the big guy had to say about his role at the magazine.
As a UGA alumnus and former football player, David’s avid love for the Georgia Bulldogs comes through the closer we get to fall. In “Dawg Days of Summer,” he explained why August is the best month to be a Bulldawg fan.
Our Favorite Covers
A few years ago, we did a little informal poll of favorite covers with some of our readers and advertisers. It was fun for us to see what their responses were—and enlightening too. We thought we’d do the same kind of thing here and asked our staff members to look back over the past five years and pick their favorite covers. These are our choices.
David Butler:
I picked my mom’s cover for my favorite. Every guy knows you’d better pick your mom!
Yolanda O’Hern
Who doesn’t love chocolate? Being of Mexican heritage, the dark chocolate with cinnamon, which is Mexican chocolate, has instant appeal. The title Passion for Chocolate with the word “chocolate” in a red cherry decorating gel made to look like it was squeezed directly from a pastry piping bag onto the cover is a gorgeous visual illusion!
Julie Andrew:
I’d have to choose our Christmas cover from 2018, because it was based on an ornament that I got for my daughter’s first Christmas. We planned and staged the shot that way, our photographer worked in some extra sparkly magic, and it came out perfectly! Any time you get to spend a day with Santa is pretty special too.
Molly Duckworth:
I love the vivid colors of this cover! And that little frog could not be cuter! It felt like something fresh and new.
Terry McCarthy:
This cover is fun, colorful and a little quirky, just like EIL. But from a production side, that fashion shoot involved organizing over 50 people. Whew, I am getting tired all over again just from thinking about it! But when we can bring together people who don’t know each other, they have a good time, make new friends, leave happy, and we end up with great shots, it’s magical!
Kathi Williams:
There are so many fabulous covers and great memories that come with creating them, but this one is special to me. I suggested this sweet family for our photo shoot featuring high school seniors because my son grew up with the Rooks boys and everyone knows and loves Coach Rooks. The photo of them is fantastic and we got so much positive feedback from the community. From a social media perspective, it turned out to be our most viewed cover of all time. I call that a win!
Todd Baker:
The truck and the dog! (And there’s a horse back there too!) I like it because I'm always wishing for cooler weather in the dog days of summer. I grew up on a farm, so I could easily see myself sitting right there on the tailgate.
Beth Rowen:
Fresh, simple, colorful.
