Charles Apple

Let’s take a moment to wish a very special VizEds birthday to Lori Kelley, deputy design director of The Virginian-Pilot.

Lori has spent the last few months holed up in a darkened, windowless room, buried in the bowels of the Pilot’s second floor. (Which, as you may know, is actually the third floor. Because we don’t count our second floor. Mwah ha-ha-ha-ha… ) There, she’s toiled with Deb Withey and Jim Haag on the detail work for the Pilot’s new redesign, which kicked off earlier this month.

Lori’s one in a million. A couple of years ago, we hired her away from The Myrtle Beach Sun News. We’re lucky to have her.

My favorite Lori moment happened this spring, as a few of us watched as Deb open the e-mails from SND informing us of the awards the Pilot won this year. Lori went to the trouble of pulling me in from my office when one of my pages — one that had been slightly controversial — captured a page design award. Lori was downright giddy with excitement for me.

But that glee turned to shock as the e-mails kept rolling in, faster than Deb could open them. Lori won one for herself. And then another. And another.

And then, Deb read off notification of a portfolio award for Lori. I looked over at her. I thought the poor girl was going to faint.

Such a talent. Such a generous person. What a pleasure it is to work with her.

A few examples of Lori’s work:

Check out her terribly outdated portfolio at NewsPageDesigner:
http://www.newspagedesigner.com/portfolios/portfolio1.php?UserID=187

This, by the way, is not the Lori Kelley who’s a singer and songwriter and who has released five CDs of her work:
http://www.lorikelley.com/

Lori shares a birthday a number of icons: Cyndi Lauper, Kris Kristofferson, Lindsay “Bionic Woman” Wagner, Meryl Streep and John Dillinger. Plus, today is National Chocolate Eclair Day. Seriously.

Happy birthday, Lori! Best wishes!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 6:12 am and is filed under Charles Apple, Happy birthday, Virginian-Pilot, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.