SILER CITY — Jordan-Matthews High School’s yearbook, Contrails, has been recognized for excellence and featured in the Jostens Look Book 2022, celebrating the best-of-the-best in yearbook design and inclusivity. The Jostens Look Book is a collection of outstanding yearbooks and their creative themes, cool covers, beautiful designs, relevant coverage of school events, meaningful storytelling, and stunning photography. Along with design excellence, the annually published Look Book honors the work of the students who create the yearbook over the course of six to 12 months. Through it, they chronicle the experiences, stories and achievements most relevant to students and that academic year.

The Contrails was created by the 2020-2021 Yearbook Staff under the direction of Jessica Kimrey, Jordan-Matthews yearbook adviser.

“The 2021 Contrails book may have been the hardest one to create yet. We began the year virtually, with no real feel for how the school year was going to go. Many of the usual events were canceled or postponed to dates beyond our deadline, so my staff had to get creative in the ways they featured our students in our book.” Kimrey said.

The Jordan-Matthews yearbook was one of only 458 yearbooks selected from nearly 1,000 yearbooks submitted. The 2022 panel of judges, composed of nationally recognized scholastic journalism professionals and award-winning yearbook advisers, selected the best examples of yearbook spreads and covers to make up the 320-page Look Book 2022.

“The Jostens Look Book showcases the hard work and dedication of students who tell the story of the school year through photos and words. It is their collaboration and communication, as well as creative thinking in challenging situations, that results in the fine designs shown in this book,” said Michael Wolf, vice president of Yearbook Marketing at Jostens. “We are very proud to celebrate the ability of this country’s future leaders and communicators by showcasing their sophisticated designs and photography.”

Kimrey and her yearbook staff received a copy of the Jostens Look Book 2022 with a plaque and banner from Jostens to recognize their outstanding achievement.

In addition, Northwood High School’s yearbook received an honorable mention.