World’s Best Designed

Each year, the highest goal of this competition is to identify work that has fundamentally shifted or improved how news and information is delivered across digital platforms. This award has been given to websites and apps, but also to overall experiences or organizations.

World’s Best Designer

World’s Best Designer is given to the individual designer that has the strongest portfolio among all individual portfolio categories 

Best in Show

SND Digital’s Best in show is meant to recognize the best individual entries from the entire competition. Best in Show awards are divided by organizational size to take those challenges into consideration. This year, we have: 

• Best in Show for small organizations
• Best in Show for medium organizations
• Best in Show for large organizations

Gold Medals

Visual storytelling that defines the state of the art. These entries must stretch the limits of creativity both visually and technically. They must be groundbreaking in both form and fit — telling their story in the most powerful way imaginable. It should be perfect or as near as one can reasonably come. Any entry receiving this award should be held up as the gold standard for the design community.

Silver Medals

The aesthetic and technical proficiency of these entries should stretch the limits of the medium — representing an elevated level of execution and originality in pursuit of powerful storytelling. It should be nearly impossible to find anything deficient.

Bronze Medals

Recognizes visual storytelling at the leading edge of craftsmanship or innovation. These entries should demonstrate technical mastery, aesthetic mastery, or both. Entries receiving a Bronze Medal must have an elevated level of execution, originality or degree of difficulty.

Award of Excellence

Recognizes outstanding and excellent visual storytelling. These entries go beyond mere technical or aesthetic competency and may push the boundaries of originality and creativity.

This year the Competition Committee was expanded to include 8 people from newsrooms across the country. The committee works on a variety of tasks, including choosing judges and deciding the categories of entry.

There are also nearly 20 volunteers to help keep things running smoothly, handling everything from social media to taking notes and screenshots and updating our blog posts.

The Competition Committee includes: Anna Boone, Star Tribune Digital Designer; Heather Donahue, ESPN.com Creative Director; Brian Gross, Washington Post Deputy Design Director; Stephanie Hays, Washington Post News Designer; Yue Qiu, Bloomberg Graphics Team Leader; Mary Freda, City of Crown Point Communications/Media Manager; Simon Scarr, Reuters

Volunteers include: Emily Wright, The Washington Post; Fernanda Didini, New York Times Kids; Michelle Bloom, CoinDesk; Laurie Lawrence, American City Business Journals; Audrey Valbuena, New York Times; Hailey Haymond, UNC; Lizzie Hart, The Atlantic; Frank Hulley-Jones, The Washington Post (UK); Kathy Lee, Rest of World; Kazi Awal, Insider; Emily Sabens, The Washington Post; Spencer Holladay, Gannett; Micah Fluellen, Los Angeles Times; Skye Doherty, The University of Queensland; Stephanie Adeline, The Straits Times; Josh Chen, Northwestern University; Agnes Lee, Northwestern University; Xueer Lu, Cal Berkeley