API Staff Tribute to Ed Arnold

Mary Peskin, API's expert on newspaper design and layout remembers Ed.

It was the summer of 1983 when I boarded an airplane for my first American Press Institute seminar and my first trip to California. I arrived early at the Stanford University campus eager to learn about newspaper design and to catch a glimpse of the other coast.

Another early arriver was one of the seminar discussion leaders -- a gregarious man with a big voice, a big smile and a big moustache. Edmund C. Arnold was on a mission that evening to gather a group of young designers around a pitcher of Margaritas and war stories. He was as passionate about real journalism as finding real Mexican food. A young designer, who was making his first trip to the U.S. from Monterey, Mexico, somewhat reluctantly joined the group. Eduardo Danilo Ruiz was in search of French cuisine, but Ed Arnold's persuasive personality and engaging conversation more than made up for the lack of culinary diversity. When asked if the young Eduardo was of drinking age, Ed charmed the server and secured enough frosted, salted glasses for everyone at the big, round table.

We talked of modular layout and modern typography, white space and widths of columns, function and fundamentals. He made an impression that evening that lasted throughout the seminar week and my career. We were infected with his passion for newspaper design, and it was contagious. Ed Arnold led more than 208 API seminar discussions and touched the lives of thousands of newspaper designers. Eduardo, president and co-founder of Danilo Black, is one of the best-known Mexican designers in the world. Another rising star attending the API seminar in Stanford was Nannette Bisher who said, "Those who had the privilege of learning from Mr. Arnold became better, more thoughtful designers." Nan has been a leading figure in the field of design and has served as president of the Society for News Design and the SND Foundation.

Ed Arnold received a Lifetime Achievement Award from API in 1999, and the Edmund C. Arnold Fellowship provides financial assistance to designers to continue their career development. Now, when I walk the hall at API in Reston, Va., I see Ed Arnold moments captured in black and white photography: critiquing a sports page pinned to a cork wall, telling stories about the characters at the weekly Frankenmuth News that he once ran, and blowing out 200 candles on a cake commemorating his 200th API session in 1980. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear his deep voice that practically rattled the windows.

Mary Peskin is an associate director of the American Press Institute in Reston, Va. E-mail: mpeskin@americanpressinstitute.org