Charles Apple

Let’s wish a happy VizEds birthday to Chris Rukan, ace sports designer of The Washington Post. Chris turns 33 today.

Rukan in his Russian hockey
jersey in Syracuse, Feb. 2007.
Photo by Matt Erickson.
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Even if Chris did nothing else notable his entire career, he’d still go down in news design history — in my opinion — if only because he had the guts to design the page I’ve always wanted to do:

But, of course, Chris has had a very, very notable career. He spent years at The Orlando Sentinel. Then, he moved to a new post at The Palm Beach Post, where he did great stuff for more than two years. Then, last fall, he moved on to an even newer post — at The Washington Post.

Even in December — Chris had been in D.C. all of about a month, I think — high school sports editor Jon DeNunzio conducted one of the Post’s famous online chats to enlighten readers about the Post’s special section announcing its all-metro teams. Notice to whom DeNunzio gives props:

Ellicott City, Md.: I’d like to compliment your use of the photo edit software to compose the All-Met team photos. It was nice to see all the players included, even if they weren’t able to make the scheduled photo shoot. And, there wasn’t a bad (eyes closed, etc.) photo of any of the athletes. Great use of new technology!

Jon DeNunzio: Thanks — all the credit on that goes to Chris Rukan, our designer extraordinaire who conceived the idea. And Preston Keres, our superb photographer, took some great photos.

I’m just the word guy …

That’s Rukan for you. Drop him into any room and he’s automatically one of the sharpest people in the crowd. And one of the nicest. Read that Post chat here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/12/19/DI2006121901025.html

A few examples of Chris’ work:

See more, of course, here:
http://www.newspagedesigner.com/portfolios/portfolio1.php?UserID=12419

Chris won an SND portfolio award for his work in 2005. Check out a few samples from that entry here:
http://www.newsdesigner.com/gallery/archives/000544.php

Mark “NewsDesigner” Friesen named Chris “Hero of the Day” in Orlando last summer after Chris’ presentation on sports design went South for lack of a proper monitor connector. Read it here:
http://snd.newsdesigner.com/archives/002607.php

Chris Rukan at APSE/Orlando,
2005. Photo by David Manning.

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Two years ago in Orlando, Chris and his pal Roger Simmons of Palm Beach taught a session on “Making Special Sections Special” for APSE. Read coverage of that session here:
http://apse.dallasnews.com/2005/aug2005/13sprout.html

Chris shares a birthday with — keeping with our sports theme — Olympic skater Peggy Fleming, New York Yankee Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez and Jerry Van Dyke — who starred as “Luther” on the TV show Coach.

In addition, today is national Take Your Pants for a Walk Day. Seriously.

Happy birthday, Chris! Best wishes!

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 5:15 am and is filed under Happy birthday, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.