Charles Apple

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Let’s pause a moment to offer the heartiest VizEds birthday wishes to Dave Kordalski, AME of Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. Dave turns 52 today.

Professor Kordalski. Photo by Bill Gaspard.
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The turnaround in The Plain Dealer’s look and feel since Dave arrived seven years ago has been nothing short of astounding.

David has managed to change the culture of that paper from one of boring visuals to an incredible visual feast laid before readers every day. Hopefully, you’ve heard him at SND/Houston or SND/Orlando, talking about how he and his folks did it. The man puts on a fascinating show.

Part of it, of course, was attracting incredibly talented folks and then enabling them to do great work. Find work by Dave’s wonderful staff at NewsPageDesigner.

A 1977 graduate of the College of Wooster (Ohio), David studied studio art, biology and psychology.

Heh. Psychology. That explains a lot, actually.

Dave Kordalski, close up and personal.
VERY close up and personal. This portrait
was taken by his wife, Susan.
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David spent eight years as Design and Graphics Editor of The South Bend Tribune, then two years as art director of The Dayton Daily News.

He was hired as AME of The Detroit News in 1995, which was when I first became aware of him. Dave called me a number of times, trying to talk me into moving to Detroit. I couldn’t do it because of my health needs: I’m allergic to bullets.

I don’t regret skipping Detroit. But I wish I had taken a chance to work with Dave.

In 1999, David moved to The Plain Dealer. And then, before you knew it — Boom! — The Plain Dealer wasn’t so damn plain anymore.

I’ve been lucky enough to share a beer with Dave from time to time at SND functions. He’s one of the nicer folks you’ll ever meet.

His incredibly talented illustrator, Andrea Levy, says this about him:

David Kordalski is smart and gnarly.

He’s a bulldog for sure, man. If he believes in a concept, he will go to the mat for you (I think that’s left over from his wrestling days).

He’s also very passionate about design. In our design meetings, he’s been known to get so emphatic that the table and projector shake. It’s very funny and highly endearing.

It’s hard to stay enthusiastic in this business. Kordalski does.

Stephen Beard recently posted this photo
of a David Kordalski tattoo. It was just a
Photoshop gag. We think.
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Stephen Beard — formerly a Plain Dealer graphics reporter/artist who now works for The Indianapolis Star — writes:

My David Kordalski Celebrity Roast line:

Of all the people I’ve ever met with “tone problems,” Kord’s the only guy I know whose tone problem registers on California seismographs. The table replacement budget to offset his fist-pounding during our weekly design meetings had to be in the five-figure range.

(Note: “tone problem” refers to a line David always made after feeling no one listened to him; he’d chalk it up to his “tone problem.” The table-pounding is for real.)

From the heart:

Kord’s the kind of guy every newspaper needs. He’s incredibly attuned to the community the Plain Dealer covers, and he’s a good salesman of his MANY ideas about making the newspaper better. I’ll always treasure the years I spent working with him.

And William Neff of the Plain Dealer graphics department writes:

What better present can the man ask than the satisfaction of having spent years transforming one of the butt-ugliest newspapers in the western hemisphere into an SND award-hog of sufficient magnitude to warrant the Promethean attention of our saviors from the Mercury News? The work is its own reward, dammit.

Dave shares a birthday with Mark Marturello of The Des Moines Register, noted horror writer Anne Rice and a bunch of actors: Rachael Leigh Cook, Alicia Silverstone, Susan Sarandon, Charlton Heston and Buster Keaton.

Plus, today is National Golf Day. Seriously.

Happy birthday, Dave! Best wishes!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 5:09 am and is filed under Happy birthday, News design, Newspapers, Visual Editors, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.