David Miller, a beloved Seattle Times art director, dies at 67

Seattle Times ran on Obit on David today. 

By Moira Macdonald

Seattle Times arts critic 

David Miller liked to do things just so. A beautifully designed page, perhaps, for The Seattle Times’ Pacific NW magazine, where he was art director for the last seven of the 30 years he spent at the paper. An impeccably professional Christmas compilation tape or CD, made every year for family members from his vast collection of music celebrating his favorite holiday. A lovingly grilled steak (“don’t overcomplicate it,” he would tell his son, Matthew, instructing him in the fine art of the barbecue), or eggs scrambled just the way his toddler granddaughter Noah liked them. “He was the consummate perfectionist,” his wife, Kim Carney, wrote on Facebook. “Perfect is good enough,” Miller himself once said in an interview. 

A man devoted to his family and to his work in newspaper design and illustration, Miller died Oct. 2 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, after suffering a heart attack while raking leaves with his family at his Edmonds home. He was 67. 

Seattle Times newsroom staffers, grieving the sudden loss of a beloved colleague, remembered the tribute A1 pages that Miller would create for departing co-workers (unsurprisingly, they always looked utterly perfect), the kind but honest feedback he would give to younger colleagues seeking to improve their skills, the way he’d insist on giving you a ride home if you were working late, the good cheer and encouraging words he offered to everyone. 

Bill Reader, editor of Pacific NW magazine, said that Miller was that rare combination: a person of remarkable skill and talent (he’d won multiple national awards for design) who was a joy to work with every day. “He was just a really sweet person. He was funny, he was smart, he was caring about others — just a great teammate.”

Miller’s meticulousness — “he would work hours to get a headline font just perfect,” Reader said — meant that the small team putting together the magazine could breathe easy: “No matter what else, the magazine was always going to look great.” Reader described how Miller made design an integral part of the story development process. “He offered up a lot of great story ideas, he would contribute things that made stories better, he would ask good questions to help other writers and editors make those stories better. He wasn’t just waiting to have stories handed to him — he was actively involved from the beginning.”

Leon Espinoza, one of Miller’s former editors at the Times, noted that his legendary perfectionism could make editors tear their hair, but that “he was such a gentle soul, cheerful colleague and creative powerhouse, nobody could stay mad at him for long. Especially when the finished work knocked your socks off and delighted readers.”

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Miller grew up outside Kansas City, Missouri, and was a lifelong fan of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. After studying journalism at KU, Miller worked for a number of newspapers, including The Kansas City Star, The Denver Post, USA Today and the San Jose Mercury News. At the latter job, on a committee to plan the Society of Newspaper Design conference, he met Carney, then a designer for the San Francisco Examiner. It was, Carney said, pretty much love at first sight — “the magic just happened.” They married and moved to the Seattle area in 1991, the same year their son was born.

Though something of a workaholic (he was known to send work emails during the wee hours of the morning), Miller had numerous interests outside of journalism. He loved to collect things — records (often improv jazz, reflecting his years of playing jazz clarinet as a young man), windup toys, bobbleheads, wooden ducks — and was always cutting up magazines, saving stories to read later. He was a sports nut who “knew every statistic you could imagine in baseball or football,” his wife said. And he loved the holidays, particularly Christmas — appropriate for a man with a Santa-white beard and a frequent twinkle in his eye. Carney remembered how he would shop for stocking stuffers all year round, always keeping an eye out for just what each family member might love. “Sometimes you’d have to have two [stockings] because he’d bought too much.”

Miller’s son, Matthew, spoke of quality time with his dad growing up, particularly camping trips and Little League games. Miller coached his son’s team (kids would come up to him in the supermarket to talk to “Coach Dave”) and insisted on fairness: everyone got a chance to play every position. And he was an indulgent, adoring grandpa to his two granddaughters: 8-year-old Mason and 3-year-old Noah, whom he loved to spoil with ice cream and books. “He was extremely sweet with them,” Miller’s son said, “always taking them out for treats.”

In addition to his wife, son and granddaughters, Miller is survived by his daughter-in-law, Bri Miller; his brother, Barry Miller; and his sister, Kate Nelson. A memorial service is currently being planned. In lieu of flowers, the family would be grateful for donations to Seattle Children’s hospital or any food bank (their local one is Edmonds Food Bank). 

“He knew how to make everyone feel loved and welcome,” Bri Miller said. “He really was the light of every room.”