Today, we’ll take a look at the late John Monahan — thoughts, memories and a few fun stories.
The facility handling John’s funeral announced overnight that arrangements have been made:
Visitation on Thursday, March 25, 2010 from 4:00 to 8:00 pm at the John C. Bryant Funeral Home, 56 Pemberton Road (Off Route 30), Wayland. Interment will be private.
A Memorial Service celebrating John’s life will be held on Friday, March 26, 2010 at 1:00 pm at the Trinitarian Congregational Church, 53 Cochituate Road (Route 27) Wayland Center.
His family requests, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations in John’s memory may be sent to Samaritans, Inc., 141 Tremont St., 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02111.
Find a full obituary in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and at the funeral home’s web site.
As I mentioned Monday, John was graphics director for the Gannett News Service in the late 1980s and then director of AP graphics in the early 1990s:
Yes, that’s a printout of the original advisory announcing John was moving to the AP. The text of the release:
Monahan named to head AP Graphics
November 9, 1989
John Monahan has been named assistant managing editor for graphics of The Associated Press, Louis D. Boccardi, AP president and general manager, announced today.
Monahan, 34, had been director of Gannett News Service’s graphics network, which he helped develop in 1987. The next year, he was named coordinator of Gannett Graphics Network, and he was named director this year.
Monahan will oversee the AP’s graphics department, which produces a daily graphics report for hundreds of newspapers in the U.S. and around he world.
While at Gannett, Monahan was instrumental in setting up the USA Today - Apple College Information Network. He is the creator and editor of the Society of Newspaper Design’s monthly newsletter, Deadline Mac. He also helped develop MacTrac, a series of week-long training seminars held at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla., for newspaper Macintosh artists. He has taught workshops and classes in computer graphics at Rhode Island School of Design.
A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, he also worked as a graphic artist for the Quincy (Mass.) Patriot-Ledger.
Monahan will join the AP on January 2, 1990. He replaces Don DeMaio, who resigned as Director of Graphics in September 1989 to take a position at The National, a new sports daily scheduled to begin publication in 1990.
A number of John’s friends, colleagues and professional acquaintances shared their personal memories of John…
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Matt Carroll, a database reporter for the Boston Globe, writes that he first met John when they were both five years old. Matt lived across the street from John.
Matt writes:
I’m proud to say I got John his first job in newspapers. Bill Cunningham (later at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA and Orange County Register) and I started a bi-weekly newspaper, The Post, in some Boston neighborhoods in about 1978. We were desperate for cheap help, and John volunteered to be our photographer. (pay = $0 per week.)
A graduate of Mass Art, he was already an accomplished feature photographer. Working mostly with Bill, his news photography improved quickly and dramatically. He was a great addition to the staff, helping with everything from photos to cartoons to paste-up.
The paper only last a year, but he quickly followed Bill to the Ledger, and then (I think) Gannett. He was off and running.
While he had dropped out of sight in recent years, his artistic ambition had taken flight again recently. He had taken a number of photos in an antique store in Dedham, Mass., which he had hoped to have published in a limited edition book. He showed me the work a month or so ago. I’m no great critical judge of photos, but I thought the work was great. I hope there is a venue where these pictures can be published whether in print or online.
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George Rorick writes:
John and I were good friends, we were also very competitive since we both became directors of news-graphic services. When we first met, John was graphics editor/art director for Gannett’s Washington, D.C. news-graphics while I was graphics editor for USA Today. Soon after I became Director of graphics for Knight-Ridder Tribune in Washington, D.C. John became Director of AP Graphics in New York.During this same period, John and I conducted several Mac-Track Graphic Seminars for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL. We were also instructors at the Nigel Holmes/Rhode Island School of Design, news-graphic workshops for about 10 years.
John (right), George (with glasses) and Terence Oliver at Poynter. George has retired. Terence now teaches at Ohio University.
I remember, among many things, we would argue which computer drawing application would be better for both AP and Knight-Ridder Tribune. At the time I liked Freehand for it’s ease of archiving and file transfer technology. John wanted Illustrator.
John eventually won that discussion, didn’t he?
I’m proud to say that I knew John very well but I never understood why he disappeared without even a trace. I still miss him.
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Nigel Holmes writes:
Many have said how funny John was. I’ve never laughed as much as I did when he was helping me with the RISD workshops. We would create really silly things for the “students” to do to keep them motivated during what was always a grueling and intensive week’s work. We cracked ourselves up, and our use of slightly childish humor really helped the sometimes hard-hitting critiques.
I relied on John a lot during those years. In fact, looking back, I realize I could not have done them without him. We did eight workshops together, I think.
Here are some pictures from the RISD thing. They are all from the 1990 workshop and, surprisingly, they’re the only ones of John i could find. Then, I remembered that was because he appointed himself the workshop photographer and wouldn’t let anyone else get a hold of the Polaroid camera!
Click any for a larger view:
The green numbers are his, too; he numbered every one and we put them up along one wall (the good and the bad together) as the week progressed.
Like all of you (I think), I lost touch touch with John long ago.
At one time he lived in Norwalk, the town next to Westport, where I live. I visited him and his beautiful children and wife a couple of times. He came to see me in my office here, and we worked on a project together.
I’m afraid I don’t know where he ended up. I’m sorry that I never followed up when he went “missing.”
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John Grimwade writes:
I didn’t know John well, but in transit to an SND conference one year, I had a great conversation with him. His thoughts about infographics were really insightful, and he made me laugh so hard that I hurt myself!
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Peter Ong writes:
Oh man! I met John when he conducted a graphics workshop at the Poynter back in the 90s! We were using those little Macs and MacDraw then. John was a great guy!
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Bill Pitzer writes:
I attended the first MacTrac at Poynter, way back whenever, and then helped teach the seminar with John, Rorick and others the next three years.
John was always warm and engaging and it was a real loss to inforgraphics folks when he faded from the scene. His efforts to help provide training sessions helped many of the best infographics folks get a leg up when the Mac and the early software packages came into play.
I submitted some things to the DeadlineMac newsletter back in the day. I don’t remember any specifics, probably some drawing tips and most likely something on creating color using MacDraw. I think Rorick or Bill Baker was doing that about the same time, and I seem to recall something we did for DeadlineMac.
Deadline Mac was a pull-out tech tips newsletter that inserted
in SND/Update magazine. It had a number of contributors and
editors over the years, including by John Monahan:
It seems so silly now, but at the time it was a huge step forward and a way to move away from hand-cutting color with amberlith. We realized that you could use MacDraw II to make multiple art-board dupes with registration marks in place. Once the dupes were made you simply filled in the polygons with to make the screen masks, then printed everything out for the back shop.
The first time I did this in Norfolk was for a graphic for the old afternoon Ledger-Star. I was up all night trying to get it right and make the masks correctly using the now antiquated tools in MacDraw. But it worked and we quickly adopted the new workflows in the art department.
Somewhere in the files I have a few old samples. I’d print out the black plate and use colored pencils to make all the CMYK calculations. Doing color this way was a quantum leap, but soon FreeHand and Illustrator, and eventually, MacDraw added color, so [this technique] was relegated to the dust bin.
For many of us though, DeadlineMac was a lifeline at a time when technology was completely remaking how we did our jobs. The contributions of Nigel, John and George to help us along were instrumental and they each had the insight to not only teach tech skills. They taught a lot of fundamental visual information design principles along with the software and that, in the long run, made all the difference in the world.
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I’ll go next. I’m Charles Apple.
I met John at a “Mactrac” infographics seminar at Poynter in April 1989 — exactly 21 years ago next month, in fact. John was there teaching, along with Jeff Goertzen, who, at the time, was with the Orange County Register. And, of course, George Rorick was running the show.
Among the other students there that week: Elizabeth Weaver of the Indianapolis Star, the late Ed Walker of the Seattle Times, George Frederick of the Asbury Park Press (and now with the Newark Star-Ledger) and Richard Boyd of the Winston-Salem Journal (then an artist; now senior editor for design and production).
We each worked on a big class project — involving an airplane accident and a 3D-looking map. I was buzzing right along with mine until John looked over my shoulder and insisted I make major changes. The map should go above and the plane below, he said. It worked better that way.
Well, I took issue with that. (Those of you who know me, feel free to roll your eyes now.)
I wanted the plane up top because I thought the text I had written worked better if you read the bit about the plane first. But John was in full art-direction mode and I was a little green at the time. So I reluctantly made the changes. John happily moved off to help the next student.
On the left is the version John had pushed me to complete.
On the right is my eventual finished class project. Click
either for a larger view.
A few minutes later, George made his rounds. He passed my work station, came to a halt and backed up two or three steps. He looked over my shoulder and said: You flopped it.
Well, yes, I did, I replied. I started to give George the reasons why — basically, to parrot what John had told me before. But George kind of interrupted and told me it was working much better the other way.
I couldn’t help but steal a glance at John, who was standing in the next aisle. Looking straight at me, John formed a little “o” with his mouth, as if to say: Oh, shit. Sorry ’bout that.
It only took me a few minutes to change my graphic back to the way it had been. No harm done.
But I learned a valuable lesson about art direction and critique: You can take two experienced, talented graphics editors and get two completely different opinions from them. And neither one is necessarily wrong.
To this day, I try not to be absolute when art directing or critiquing an employee or a student. Hey, convince me. Prove me wrong. There’s no science to this; that’s why they call it art. Right?
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Jeff Goertzen writes:
I had the pleasure of working with John Monahan in the late 1980s at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies where he, George Rorick and I conducted the Mac tracks graphics workshops. He was always a pleasure to work with. His charming personality and deep radio voice was iconic.
Back then, John wore a mustache and I kidded him that he looked like a motorcycle cop. So one night in his hotel room, I convinced him to shave the mustache and mousse his hair up. (Note — I didn’t make it a habit to hang out in John’s hotel room). It was an epic moment because John always had a mustache.
I still have the photos.
Here, John proudly poses with me to show off his new look, the day after shaving his mustache:
John tries a GQ pose with Jeff Dionise, then a graphics artist at KRT Graphics [and now with USA Today]:
Here, John tries to convince George Rorick and Poynter staffer Billie Keirstead that the shave and mousse was a good idea. Neither one are buying it.
The next day at the Poynter, the staff went berserk. I don’t think he ever grew it back after that.
In 1990 when I was working with El Mundo in Madrid, John called me up to see if I would team up with him and his staff at AP to produce the Olympic graphics. Unfortunately, George Rorick at Knight Ridder Graphics called me as well to do the same. Awkward. Even though George had been my boss at The Detroit News years prior, I chose to work with John. It was that charming radio voice I couldn’t say no to. George was miffed! But eventually, he got over it.
Several of the Olympics pieces to which Jeff refers appeared in the Best of Newspaper Design annual, 14th edition. Click any of these for a larger view:
The joint AP/El Mundo/El Periodico Olympics project won
a number of gold, silver and bronze medals that year.
Producing the Olympic graphics with John and Karl Gude, who was AP’s art director at the time, was to this day the most memorable and valued graphics project I’ve ever worked on. Largely due to John Monahan. He was great to work with.
Since then, I heard from John periodically. But after 1994, I never heard from him again. He was a great guy.
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Karl Gude writes:
John Monahan and I worked together at The Associated Press for five wonderfully hectic years starting in 1991 until I left for Newsweek magazine in 1996.
John was the Director of Graphics at The AP in New York’s Rockefeller Center and I worked under him as the Editorial Graphics Director. He dealt with budgets, employees, newspaper members and new technologies while I managed the news report. We made a great team. I was yin to his yang. He was a real dreamer about what could be, and I was much more interested in what was. We ate hundreds of lunches together and discussed the workplace, our families and talked about visual communication to no end.
John was special. He had a lot of depth, a lot on his mind. Sometimes he was a million miles away and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
I liked John’s managerial style. Sometimes, when he’d ask me to do something that I didn’t agree with, he had a way of passionately focusing on the positive aspects of the task, and, despite my protests, he wouldn’t back down, ever, when his mind was made up that this was a good thing to do. I really respected him for that.
Here’s a quirky photo of John from 1993, the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. I had to do a graphic on this so, after visiting Dealy Plaza where I made the sketch on the left, I returned to NYC and posed John, in the back, and AP artist Jack Elcik in the positions of Kennedy and Connolly.
Click for a much larger view:
I used the photo as reference for the graphic you see here, which was only a small part of a full page graphic detailing the whole day.
We were also neighbors in Connecticut and our kids, four young blond boys (two each), were the exactly same age and got along as well as John and I did. Our wives became best friends and we spent lots of time at each others’ homes having barbeques and all that good neighborly stuff.
I became incredibly adept at imitating John, particularly his laugh, which consisted of his eyes first widening, then one hand flying to his stomach and the other to his chin punctuated by a huge expulsion of air escaping through smiling lips as he bent over in hysterics. Barely a sound was made.
John had a wonderful, almost innocent child-like side to him. He could be refreshingly honest with his reactions. Once, at a semi-formal function, John shook the hand of an older man who was notorious for crushing the bones in the hands of men and women he greeted as a show of power. John was no exception. As John and the man shook hands John face twisted in pain and he fell to his knees and squealed “OWWWWW! That’s quite a grip you got there!”
We all smiled as the hand crusher stormed away insulted and embarrassed. I told John that many of us had been waiting a long time to see that happen.
Shortly after I left AP for Newsweek John also left AP and New York and we lost touch with each other, and I regret that.
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As I said earlier, we’ve been sending all this material along to John’s family. Last night, John’s youngest brother, Matt Monahan, wrote us:
We appreciate all the kind words you and others in the graphics community have said about him — it is comforting to hear that he was well-liked and respected, and was able to have fun and make people laugh too. His “graphics years” were probably the most challenging and professionally rewarding in his life, and it is nice to hear from the folks who lived it with him, and learn more about him and a part of his life life that we didn’t get to see first hand.
Thanks to all who have shared their memories.
If you have something to share, please feel free to comment or to e-mail me. I’d be glad to add it here.
