SND47 Berkeley

Alex K. Fong is SND’s current vice president. He is the creative director and a masthead editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he oversees a multidisciplinary team of designers, graphic artists, graphics reporters and developers.

His nearly two decades of experience in the news industry has included leadership roles in newsrooms in the United States and overseas. In 2012, he collaborated on the redesign of some 80 daily print newspapers for Digital First Media, including the Los Angeles Daily News and the El Paso Times. During a four-year stint in China, Alex advocated for greater rigor in the practice of visual journalism and led the award-winning redesign of the Shanghai Star.

Alex has mentored journalism students at the City College of San Francisco (where he was once a student) and currently serves on the journalism department’s advisory board.

Alex is a musician in his spare time. He founded the post-punk band The Paper Tigers while living in Beijing. He builds his own audio electronics and has studied audio engineering and production privately at a recording studio near Oakland’s Jack London Square.

Brian Gross is the former Head of the Design Department at The Washington Post. He is a newsroom design leader focused on delivering impactful, engaging storytelling through visual journalism, with an emphasis on experimentation and creative risk-taking in service of readers.

For more than 15 years at The Post, he guided dozens of designers, developers and art directors through digital transformation and helped shape some of the organization’s most ambitious projects across platforms, including a series on the AR-15 assault rifle, an investigation of the January 6 attack and the Mueller Report Illustrated. That work contributed to two Pulitzer Prizes and earned multiple Best in Show honors from SND along with a gold medal from SPD. The team was also recognized twice by SND as World’s Best for digital. As a volunteer with SND, he helped scale the digital competition and coordinate a merger with the print committee.

Taylor Le is the current Creative Director at The San Francisco Standard, where she leads cross-functional visual teams across editorial, product, and partnerships. Since joining, she has restructured departments, scaled talent, and evolved the publication’s existing brand into a more cohesive and recognizable visual system—all while driving meaningful changes in newsroom workflow and culture. As a change agent, she’s known for breaking silos, improving collaboration, and building systems that support high-impact storytelling.

Previously, Taylor served as Design Director at the Los Angeles Times, where she led a 30-person team of art directors and managers across print, digital, events, and social platforms. Her scope spanned features, entertainment, news, sports, food, Latino initiatives, and immersive visual storytelling.

Before joining the Times, Taylor brought sharp editorial instincts and creative systems thinking to organizations like Medium, AFAR Media, and San Francisco Magazine, guiding rebrands and leading process improvements across departments.

As Creative Director at Pacific Standard, she transformed a small academic journal into a nationally recognized media brand, winning a National Magazine Award for Feature Photography and forging partnerships with the Pulitzer Center, NOOR, and Magnum Photos.

With more than two decades of experience across Los Angeles and New York, Taylor has held senior creative roles at Runner’s World, People, Entertainment Weekly, and Fortune, and played a key role in building Source Interlink Media’s photo department from the ground up.

Taylor’s passion for people and process helped her develop an expertise in problem solving, resilience, and adaptability — a skillset that proves to be extremely valuable.

Alberto Lucas López is a Spanish-born journalist who, since 2016, has served as Senior Artist – New Narratives at National Geographic Magazine. In this role, he specializes in the development of innovative approaches to visual storytelling and graphic journalism. His individual work has been honored with more than 200 international awards. Prior to joining National Geographic, he was Graphics Director at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for News Design and, in recent years, has devoted a significant portion of his time to doctoral research in Arts and Education. He also regularly delivers international lectures and leads workshops on visual storytelling.

Greg Manifold is the former Head of Visuals and Creative Director at The Washington Post. He is a visual and design leader with over 20 years of experience shaping how journalism is experienced across platforms.

At the Post, he led multidisciplinary newsroom teams through periods of transformation, aligning visual storytelling, design strategy, and audience insights to strengthen impact, relevance, and public trust. He is known for building and mentoring high-performing creative teams, establishing clear visual direction grounded in rigor, collaboration, and executional excellence.

He brings a holistic approach to complex, high-stakes storytelling, connecting ideas, disciplines, and teams to deliver cohesive work at scale.

Jarvis Moore is a self-taught designer whose career began in graphic design, evolved into UX, and now focuses on design systems. He continuously prioritizes learning and professional growth.

Moore currently serves as Lead Product Designer, Design Systems at News Corp.‘s Realtor.com.

His experience includes building systems at companies such as NerdWallet, LinkedIn, and Ascension Health, before leading the Marketing Design Systems team at Microsoft. In that role, he oversaw both strategy and day-to-day execution for the design function, working closely with engineering counterparts.

Beyond Realtor.com, he teaches as a Design Systems Instructor at Memorisely and mentors early-career designers. He has also contributed to the field as a conference speaker, podcast guest, and instructor of two masterclasses for the Interaction Design Foundation.

Outside of design, his family is his primary motivation. As a father of three, he is driven to provide for them and models his work ethic accordingly. He is also an avid sneaker enthusiast — preferring the term “sneaker connoisseur.” He welcomes opportunities to connect and expand his network, and is open to conversations, questions, or collaboration.

Anna Thurfjell is a Brand Creative Director who loves type, news and brand design. She lives in Copenhagen with her family and black cat. She is passionate about biking, music and the writing of Haruki Murakami.

Thurfjell was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1975. She received an MA from Konstfack University in 2000. She served as the creative director of Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) from 2003 to 2013, where she directed the custom typeface Sueca in collaboration with Feliciano Type in 2009.

Today she runs her award-winning design studio, which has helped some of Northern Europe‘s most loved news organizations adapt to the evolving media landscape. Her skill is in developing brand visual identities and news design for media brands by strengthening their graphic and visual design DNA on all touch points. Her clients include Aftonbladet (Sweden), Berlingske (Denmark), Aftenposten (Norway), and Helsingin Sanomat (Finland).

Thurfjell’s designs have won multiple awards, including Best in Show and World’s Best Designed by SND. Thurfjell has previously given 11 talks in Europe and the United States. She is honored to serve as a judge for SND’s 2026 Creative Competition in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.