Charles Apple

Let’s pause on this hectic Friday to offer the happiest of VizEds birthday wishes to Ernie Smith of Link. Ernie turns 27 today.

The most interesting picture of Ernie
from his Facebook gallery.
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Link, of course, is a daily free tabloid and a sister paper of The Virginian-Pilot, with offices located one floor below us in downtown Norfolk.

Ernie’s been with Link nearly two years, starting out in sports and then spreading all over the paper. You’ll note below that he’s been doing covers lately. And they don’t suck.

Ernie provides critiques of design and photo work
last fall at SND/Boston. Photo by Robb Montgomery.
—

A 2004 graduate of Michigan State, Ernie spent nine months as a temporary designer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, working on features pages and learning CCI.

In June 2005, Ernie joined Bluffton Today — in Bluffton, S.C., not far from Hilton Head — where he joined Jim McBee’s crew in turning out a wonderfully inventive and unpredictable microzoned free daily tab with citizen journalism and a huge web component.

In September 2006, Ernie signed on as a charter member of Link.

Ernie performs at Madison Square Garden.
Or perhaps it was a smaller venue. I get them
all confused sometimes. In this photo, I
believe he’s doing “All Along the Watch-
tower” by Jimi Hendrix. Photo from Ernie’s
Facebook page.
—

Ernie is a gifted songwriter and singer. A while back, he was kind enough to give me a CD of him performing some of his songs. I was torn between praise for his work and wanting to yell at him for not pursing some kind of recording deal.

But who would ever want to yell at Ernie? He’s such a nice guy. A couple months ago, he shaved his head in support of children with cancer.

Ernie in March. A side-effect of shaving his head
is that he now looks like he could kick your ass.
I wouldn’t mess with him if I were you. Photo
from Ernie’s Facebook page.
—

A few samples of Ernie’s work:

Find more in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

Ernie shares a birthday with soccer star David Beckham, supermodel Naomi Campbell, wrestler-turned-movie star Dewayne “The Rock” Johnson, singer Englebert Humperdinck, famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, Russian leader Catherine the Great and World War I aviator Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen — better known as “The Red Baron.”

Plus, today is Fire Day. Seriously.

Best wishes for a happy birthday, Ernie!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 7:15 am and is filed under Free publications, 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.