The Society for News Design is proud to announce the Best in Show winners for its Best of News Design Creative Competitions. This year judges evaluated more than 5,000 entries across both competitions and have awarded these four stories Best in Show honors.
The Best in Show winners are:
Digital
- Large organization: How Speed and Distance Dictate How Olympians Run. The New York Times
- Medium organization: The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the Air Is Safe. ProPublica
- Small organization: Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them. The Markup
- Micro organization: How the Taxi Workers Won. Economic Hardship Reporting Project
The 43rd Best of Print News Design Creative Competition ended with the jury of 27 judges awarding 18 gold medals, 68 silver medals and 796 awards of excellence. No Best in Show was awarded. Best in Show is the highest honor that can be awarded to a single entry during the SND Creative Competition. All Gold Medal winners are considered for this award at the conclusion of judging. Only one Best in Show may be given and 75 percent of the judging panel must agree in order for a Best in Show to be awarded. This is granted to the best single entry among all categories, apart from entries considered for World’s Best Designed. You can see the complete database of all award winners here.
Best of News Design – Digital
For the digital competition, a group of 21 judges from around the world selected four stories from micro, small, medium and large newsrooms for Best in Show honors in the Society for News Design’s 43rd edition creative competition, the Best of Digital News Design.
“How Speed and Distance Dictate How Olympians Run” won two gold medals in the competition in the Infographics – Sports category and Format – Use of Video category. “The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the Air Is Safe” won a bronze medal in the Story Page Design – Environment and Science category. “Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them” won a bronze medal in the Infographics – Investigative category. And “How the Taxi Workers Won” won an award of excellence in the Format – Use of Commissioned Illustration (multiple) category.
The Best of Digital News Design™ is a juried contest honoring visual and technical excellence in storytelling, graphics, social media and product design. The competition awarded 10 gold medals, 24 silver medals, 115 bronze medals and 578 awards of excellence to work from 137 organizations. The winners came from 1,948 entries.
Best in Show (large newsrooms):
How Speed and Distance Dictate How Olympians Run | The New York Times
Judges recognized this entry for many aspects, particularly its technical perfection paired with outstanding art direction: “It’s such a gorgeous, beautifully shot video to service a perfectly crafted visual explanation.”
They applauded the clever framing of the piece, following three runners from different distance events, and the integrated combination of data and video; every element is relevant, and the efficiently-controlled flow of information imposes a rhythm. “The art direction for the running piece is beyond anything I could have imagined. It put the human body at its peak performance on full display, supplemented with clean analysis and data viz.
Best in Show (medium-size newsrooms):
The Smoke Comes Every Year. Sugar Companies Say the Air Is Safe. | ProPublica
Judges commented on the strong color choices and clean design in effectively communicating how engagement journalism works: “Full of interesting and perfectly-executed details in all the photo treatment, graphics and typography.”
They also noted the cohesive style: “Every format was there to fulfill a precise mission from the mapping, to the scrollytelling, to the picture editing, the insets … and they all worked seamlessly.”
The novel approach to the intro helped this entry stand out in a highly competitive category: “The simple but powerful top grabbed my attention as a reader from the very beginning and managed to maintain that attention with all the following visuals.”
Best in Show (small newsrooms):
Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them | The Markup
In a note to judges, The Markup described the premise of the project: This investigation rests on an exhaustive analysis of more than five million crime predictions produced by software firm PredPol, which directed dozens of law enforcement agencies across the country to patrol Black, Latino, and low-income neighborhoods more than richer and Whiter areas.
Judges appreciated the stunning visual introduction as well as the use of data in concise and restrained visualizations. The clear graphic comparisons and maps, backed up by the text, were compelling in the telling of the story.
The Markup “made a complex story digestible and engaging, with a minimal and clean design.” The aesthetic helped get to the heart of its incredible dataset.
“The Markup’s Crime Prediction Software story is thoroughly reported and exquisitely executed. The graphics in the story walk you through every question you could have from ‘What’s happening?’ to ‘How are predictions are generated?’”
Best in Show (micro newsrooms)
How the Taxi Workers Won | Economic Hardship Reporting Project
Judges were drawn to the “gorgeous, emotional portraits of the taxi drivers” that brought their humanity and personalities to the forefront and helped carry the reader through the piece.
“Molly Crabapple’s work reminds me how much I have in common with every other human who shares this earth. In these images, she showed struggle and joy in one stroke.”
The powerful, gallery-worthy illustrations conveyed more than what a traditional portrait photograph could provide and evoked a level of emotional response on par with the text. The painterly, textured approach was unconventional, and the strong color choices and attention to detail brought a striking cohesion to the story.
“The simplicity of the layout, the good typeface choices and especially the great level of illustrations gives a special atmosphere to the story. is a subject totally connected with the city and its inhabitants. It has a huge human dimension”