»
S
I
D
E
B
A
R
«
DALE YARGER R.I.P.
March 6th, 2012 by Clark Humphrey

stranger cover, 8/30/95, art direction by dale yarger, illo by neilwaukee

I haven’t gotten all the details yet, but it appears Dale Yarger, a mammoth force in Seattle publication design, passed away over the weekend.

He’d been living in California for at least the past four years. But his local work is still a huge influence around here.

Yarger was one of the Rocket’s several rotating art directors in the 1980s. He created many memorable covers there and also made an early iteration of the Sub Pop logo, back when that was the title of Bruce Pavitt’s indie-music review column.

During that time he also co-founded a gay paper called Lights, art-directed The Oregon Horse magazine, and collaborated with artist Carl Smool on a memorable anti-Reagan bus sign.

Yarger became one of Fantagraphics Books’ first Seattle hires after the comix publisher came here from L.A. He redesigned the company’s Comics Journal magazine (where I first knew him), and essentially did every visual thing on its comics and books that wasn’t done by the artists themselves. He instilled the appreciation for top-notch design, typography, and production that now marks the company’s admired graphic novels and comic-strip collections.

By 1995 he transferred over to that other hip bastion, The Stranger. In his three-year stint there, Yarger took the alt-weekly from the look of “a zine on steroids” into the slick product it’s been ever since.

He also had a hand in the visuals of Seattle Weekly, the University Book Store, and Dana Countryman’s Cool and Strange Music magazine.

I will always remember him as a cool head even when surrounded by hot heads, a perfectionist who still understood schedules and budgets, a man with a knack for making even the most mundane assignment sparkle.

UPDATE: Now I’m told Yarger had stomach cancer, for which he’d had surgery some time last year.


2 Responses  
  • Dana Countryman writes:
    March 11th, 20123:14 pmat

    Hi Clark,
    Dale was an integral part of my magazine, and I’ll never forget his devotion to it. He’d even take a day off from his day job to help me with the most unpleasant and thankless of jobs — boxing up heavy crates of the magazines for the post office and UPS.

    More than that he was just a cheerful and talented guy, and great fun to have around. I was sad when he moved away to California. We’d socialized many times outside of work, going to concerts, dinners, etc. My wife Tricia because very bonded to Dale, and they both shared a love for Broadway musicals.

    When we heard he had stomach cancer, we flew down to San Francisco, and spent some time with Dale and Misha. He bravely fought this disease for over two years, and he remained cheerful that he could kick it. Just recently, when we’d heard that he was going downhill fast, my wife and I Fed Ex’d a care package to him, and I hope he had the energy to check it out. In it, was an advance copy of my upcoming book, “Troll’s Story” – co-authored with musician Jean-Jacques Perrey. Dale meticulously had edited the book for me. It may be his last contribution to the graphics world….

    Tricia and I had dinner with Dale and Misha when they made a surprise flight up to Seattle, last December, and it was good to see him. The chemo and radiation had turned Dale into a very skinny guy, but he still had the same cheerfulness as always, even in the face of death.

    In the end, the cancer won out over him. Just recently, Dale decided to let his body die, and he went very quickly.

    He was really one of a kind, and we’ll miss him terribly.

  • Clark Humphrey writes:
    March 12th, 20123:51 pmat

    Thank you very much for this.


Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

»  Substance:WordPress   »  Style:Ahren Ahimsa
© Copyright 1986-2025 Clark Humphrey (clark (at) miscmedia (dotcom)).