J. Ford Huffman
BOYD’S STATION COLLABORATOR | WRITER | ARTIST | Editor | CREATIVE DIRECTOR
J. Ford Huffman is an editor and writer, creative director and artist based in Washington, D.C.
He has the honor of being the creator of the first artistic endeavor at Boyd's Station designing the iconic Boyd's Station "cultivating the arts in the Bluegrass" illustration in 2014.
He has worked with Gulf News of Dubai, Hindustan Times of India, San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post, and his assemblage art has been exhibited and sold in galleries in Washington.
He advised Visual.ly, the data-visualization agency in San Francisco, and (pro bono) the National Building Museum, the nonpartisan Veterans Campaign, and Words After War. He is on the Student Veterans Of America advisory board.
He co-edited a Library Journal “notable” book of 2012, Marine Corps University Press’ anthology, “The End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and he edited and co-designed the late Ambassador John S.D. Eisenhower’s memoir, Mabuhay.
Until December 2007 he was a deputy managing editor at USA TODAY, where his responsibilities included recommending the design and art direction of Page One. He directed the millennium edition (Dec. 31, 1999) that sold 3.3 million copies. In early 1981, he was design director of the first prototypes of USA TODAY, including the color weather map. At the startup in 1982 he was a content editor in Life. He began his journalism career at the Wheeling, W.Va., News-Register.
Huffman is a contributor to A Practical Guide to Graphics Reporting (2006) and Creative Editing for Print Media (1996 and 2012) and has presented workshops from Nova Scotia to Costa Rica for the Society for News Design, Warsaw and Budapest for the Freedom Forum, and Prague for the University of Miami.
He has taught at the Defense Information School at Ft. Meade, Md., the American Press, Maynard and Poynter Institutes and at universities from Florida to South Dakota. He has been a panelist at Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School and Marine Corps War College five times.
He has taught in 50 Gannett newsrooms, including Defense News and Army, Navy, and Air Force Times, which were redesigned and Marine Corps Times introduced in 1999. He has reviewed more than 200 books, mainly about the Afghanistan and Iraq era, for Military Times.
He has designed sets for Oglebay Institute Towngate Theater, and he apprenticed at Shaw (Theater) Festival in Ontario in 1990. The Marine Corps selected his design as the brand image for the 2004 marathon; he has completed 12 Corps marathons and 30 other marathon races.
A magna cum laude graduate of the WVU School of Journalism, he was managing editor of the Daily Athenaeum.
Images of his art are available at:
