Charles Apple

Let’s wish the happiest of VizEds birthdays to Matt Erickson, Design Director of The Times of Northwest Indiana. Matt turns 32 today.

Move over, ZZ Top, here’s a very well-dressed Matt.
Photo stolen from someone’s Flickr feed.
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Matt has been with the Times since his graduation from Eastern Illinois University in 1997. Year before last, he was coordinator for the annual SND contest (SND27). Earlier this year, he became the Director of Region 4 of the Society for News Design.

A couple of Matts — Mansfield and Erickson –
hang out in the pub at SND/Boston in October.
Photo by Steve Dorsey.
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Matt worked on The Times of Northwest Indiana’s 2004 redesign that won three redesign awards from SND. He has also redesigned The Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., and the Orangeburg (S.C.) Times & Democrat. Earlier this year, he and some friends founded Kern Redesign, a news design and consulting firm.

Perhaps Matty’s best known as the mastermind behind the Times‘ micro-micro-focused high school football edition, of which 29 separate editions were produced. That little project won Matt a silver award, a Judges’ Special Recognition award and caused most of the rest of us to wonder about Matt’s sanity. That was a lot of work.

I show slides of this project in some of my own shows. The montage of 29 covers never fails to produce gasps from my audience.

Just incredible. See more of Matt’s work in his NewsPageDesigner portfolio.

And as if all this wasn’t enough, Matt is one of the more colorful characters you’ll meet when you attend an SND function. And friendly.

But mostly, colorful.

Matt parades into “The Swamp” at SND/Houston
in 1995, draped in towels and toilet paper and
carrying a sign he stole from the registration
desk. Photo by Doug Jessmer.
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Matty shows his winning raffle ticket during
the VizEds luncheon in SND/Orlando in 2006.
Photo by “Cascadeguy.”
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In addition to all this, Matt somehow manages to have a personal life. Go figure. His wife, Kerry, is the chief of the Times‘ copy desk.

In his spare time, Matt collects autographs. He claims to have more than 1,300 pieces in his collection. From the look of his online autograph gallery, I’d believe it.

Just a few famous folks in his collection:

Former Chicago Bears coach and NFL Hall of Fame member Mike Ditka:

Chicago Cubs great and baseball Hall of Famer Billy Williams:

Remember the old TV show Laverne and Shirley? The actor who played Laverne — Penney Marshall — is now a Hollywood producer and director.

And lastly, of course, he is a prolific photographer at various SND functions. If not for Matty, I’d be hard-pressed when stealing photos to illustrate various blog posts.

Matt shares a birthday with actors Raven-Symoné, Susan Dey and Dorothy Lamour and former NBC news anchor Chet Huntley.

Extra points to you if you’re told enough to remember Chet Huntley. Matt isn’t. Huntley retired in 1970. Matt would have been, um, minus 5 years old.

Plus, today marks the Festival For The Souls Of Dead Whales. Seriously.

Best wishes for a happy birthday, Matt!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Happy birthday, 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.