Charles Apple

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Let’s take a moment to offer up happy VizEds birthday wishes to my good friend Mark Marturello of The Des Moines Register.

Mark pulled my sorry butt out of many a jam during my five years as The Register’s graphics editor.

Mark is the most agreeable person you’ll ever meet. He’s incredibly talented and he’s incredibly fast. Whatever the insane idea was that I agreed to pull off, I could usually toss it over to Mark and he’d knock it off brilliantly and quickly.

Mark grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa, graduated from Grand View College in Des Moines and has worked at The Register his entire career.

I suspect taking Mark out of Iowa would be like tossing Superman a kryptonite bouquet — Mark draws his strength from his environment and from the wonderful people who live and work in Iowa. You can see it in his work and in his attitude toward his work.

I remember when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated one Saturday morning in 2003. My daughter turned on the TV and heard the news. I threw on some clothes and began cramming reference materials into a big book bag.

But before I could dash out of the house, the phone rang. It was Mark. “How can I help?”

Yes, Mark’s talent and his dedication to the readers of The Register made me look awfully smart as a graphics editor. Now, he’s making the current graphics editor, Jeff Bash, look smart.

But Jeff and I both know the truth: Point Mark in a direction and scramble the hell out of his way. Mark’ll get it done.

Here are just a few examples of Mark’s wonderful work:

The “Bowl preview” and “Hang in there” pages won SND awards. See the little fellow hanging in there? He’s made of items Mark found in his mom’s house in Marshalltown, including parts of an old piano.

Katie VanDalsem Kunert has worked with Mark for seven years. She writes:

Mark is an original artist. He’s inspiring. But you would never know the guy had such remarkable talent because he isn’t one to let anyone know about it.

After 9/11, Mark wanted to do a big National Geographic-like map of Afghanistan, where clearly the U.S. was planning to attack. I was afraid the war would start before we could finish a project like that, so I set the ball rolling on something slightly different. But I promised Mark we’d revisit the idea soon.

The next spring, we did. Instead of a foreign land, however, we put together a huge piece celebrating Iowa history. Katie, who I mentioned above, did much of the research. Mark had a ball assembling the photoillustration, the map and the timeline.

The page ran as a giant doubletruck and was reprinted as a poster for classrooms:

Plus, the graphics department also produced a 12-page tabloid version and a teacher’s guide. The whole thing was published in conjunction with The Register’s NIE folks.

The project won a national Clarion award.

A huge team success. All because Mark had a vision of our tiny staff doing something like National Geographic.

Lately, The Register has found an interesting way to leverage Mark’s talent for commemorative poster pages via the ‘net.

For example, take this poster commemorating the University of Iowa’s Big 10 championship last year:

No, seriously. Take it.

That’s a high-rez PDF file. Print it any size you like and post it in your dorm room, your office cubicle or — if you’re a Michigan or Missouri fan — on the wall of your bathroom.

When I left The Register in October 2003 to join The Virginian-Pilot, Mark honored me with this illustration:

Not only did he capture a pretty good likeness, not only did he include many of my interests, hobbies and bits of my history… Mark managed to make me look as if I still had hair.

If that’s not magic, then I don’t know what is.

—Mark shares a birthday with Dave Kordalski, AME of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 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.

Get out there and play some golf, my friend. Best wishes for a happy birthday!

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