FROM THE EDITOR

They weren't exactly "The Perils of Pauline," but there were more than a few hair-raising moments for senior editor Jule Campbell, assistant Margot Huber Heckler and the rest of the SI contingent as they traveled to six islands around the world to photograph this year's swimsuit feature, which begins on page 90.

While on the microscopic Indonesian island of Sawu, for instance, Campbell had to sidestep a passing "ambulance": four men running with a stretcher, while a fifth man held an umbrella over a supine accident victim. Aboard the Caribbean cruise ship Club Med 1, Campbell and models Elle Macpherson and Rachel Hunter weathered rough seas when they caught the front end of Hurricane Klaus. And then there were the huge swells the SI gang encountered aboard the catamaran M/V Spice Islander, off the coast of Lombok, another Indonesian island. The swells threw 800 swimsuits across the deck, causing a harrowing Lycralanche.

As is annually the case, however, there was much more beauty than bad karma wherever Campbell & Company went. (They also alighted on the islands of Bali and Komodo in Indonesia, as well as on some of the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean.) Most of Sawu's 300-plus residents, only a few of whom have ever been off the island, gathered to greet the SI group, whose members bore gifts of red bandannas for the men, lipsticks for the women and pencils for the children. "We also gave the people Polaroids of themselves." says Campbell. "They considered those the most wonderful gifts ever."

The Turks and Caicos are an all-but-unheard-of group of 30 islands only an hour and 30 minutes by plane from Miami, and it was there, surrounded by turquoise waters and royal-blue skies, that SI cover model Ashley Montana sat, like Madame Defarge in a Lycra stretch maillot, incongruously knitting a four-ply cashmere sweater between shoots.

After perusing the photos from this island-hopping tour, you might take note of the new look of the rest of the magazine. From SCORECARD in the front to FOR THE RECORD in back, and on most of the pages in between, SI has been "refitted," as design director Steven Hoffman characterizes the changes.

The redesigned and expanded SCORECARD is edited by SI's editor-at-large, Steve Wulf, the first member of our staff to hold that title. In the coming weeks, SCORECARD will introduce several new features to accompany such standbys as THEY SAID IT and the illustrations of Patrick McDonnell. "As much as I loved the traditional SCORECARD, I think the new section is a leap forward in both design and content," says Wulf.

For the Record has also taken on a new dimension: Game roundups have been replaced by a broader, fresher and somewhat more detailed selection of the week's news, from both on and off the playing fields.

Finally, type designer Jonathan Hoefler worked with Hoffman to create a new group of headline typefaces, which will now be known in the business as the SI Family. One of the ways that typefaces are classified is by weight—the width and density of the letters—and the weights in the SI Family parallel those in boxing: bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, etc. "We used to have one typeface for all of our headlines, all in capital letters," says Hoffman. "With a variety of typefaces, we can better convey the tone and feel of each story."

We hope that this issue will be for our readers what putting together the swimsuit story was for Campbell. "It was," she says, "a constant discovery."

PHOTO

JULE G. CAMPBELL

Judit Masco (left) was framed in the Caribbean; Kathy Ireland had the run of Sawu.

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HANS FEURER

[See caption above.]

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JULIE STERN

Campbell (left) and MacPherson hit the deck on the Club Med 1.