The Society for News Design is proud to announce the finalists for World’s Best Designed™ in its Digital and Print Best of News Design Creative Competitions. This year judges evaluated more than 5,000 entries across both competitions and have narrowed the field down to seven finalists.
World’s Best Designed winners for both competitions will be announced Monday, March 28.
Best of Digital News Design
A panel of 21 judges from the Society for News Design’s 43rd edition creative competition, the Best of Digital News Design, has selected Reuters, The Pudding and The New York Times as finalists for its World’s Best Designed™ honor.
Judges were impressed with The New York Times’ coverage of climate change and the Summer Olympics. They were also drawn to the staff portfolio from Reuters, which included stories like T-Day: The Battle for Taiwan, Bats and the origin of outbreaks and more. The Pudding was also recognized for its staff portfolio, full of stories about Oreos and the art of crossword puzzle construction, How you play spades is how you play life and more.
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.
All of the portfolios from these organizations won silver medals during the competition. See the full organizational portfolios below.
Reuters
Their staff portfolio consisted of these stories:
T-Day: The Battle for Taiwan | Bats and the origin of outbreaks | How China’s Poyang lake was decimated by sand mining | A visual breakdown of the Coney Island hot dog eating competition | Flights over Kabul
The New York Times
Their staff portfolio consisted of these stories about climate and Olympics coverage:
Subtle shifts hint at dramatic dangers in the Atlantic Ocean | A climate alarm rising from the Antarctic | This glacier in Alaska is moving 100 times faster than normal | A climate change guide for kids | Sunisa Lee is unmatched on uneven bars and wants Olympic glory | Here’s what happened in Simone Biles’s vault | How Olympic athletes run | Who leads the medal count | How fast the Jamaican sprinters ran to sweep the women’s 100 meters
The Pudding
Their staff portfolio consisted of these stories:
Oreos and the art of crossword puzzle construction | Nothing breaks like AI heart | Hearing yourself represented with same-gender lyrics for the first time | How you play spades is how you play life | The hidden risks of sesame allergies
Best of Print News Design
After three days of discussion, judges in the Society for News Design’s Best of Print News Design Creative Competition have selected four finalists in the World’s Best Designed™ category.
The finalists are:
Het Parool
This reader-friendly Dutch daily is incredibly disciplined in its use of typefaces and shows a great command of the grid. An exquisite use of portraits for columnists, both illustrated or with photos with a consistent aesthetic, is striking. This publication highlighted the diversity of its authors and subjects reflecting the audience it hopes to engage. The use of infographics is straightforward but appropriate to the general design. Highlighted columns call the reader to take part in a conversation while fact boxes and other breakouts make this a highly scannable reading experience.
de Volkskrant
De Volkskrant means the people’s paper and the content and design reflect this sentiment. Understated and with a limited color palette, the paper’s content and visuals are left to stand out. This is clearly a design team that employs a high level of craft to articulate the paper’s journalism. With superb typographical detailing, the pages are balanced with bold typographic choices and carefully selected imagery.
DIE ZEIT
DIE ZEIT’s minimal design choices create a hierarchy executed with simple flawless sophistication, allowing imagery to serve not only as companion to the text, but as a visual conversation on its own. Strong, artful photo edits are a hallmark — effective as dramatic point of entry single photographs or as conversational diptychs that speak directly to each other. So much care and attention is enacted on every page that we could imagine a reader saving an issue to return to through the week.
New York Times
The New York Times is impressive with deft and extensive use of visuals to support its strong journalism. The breadth of topics serviced by brilliant editorial design is exemplary. An enormous print offering successfully employs a shared visual language while clearly signposting to the reader a multitude of sections. Insightful special sections examine topics and current events with a depth unmatched by other entries with designs both simple and bold. The infographics are particularly successful; explaining complex and challenging issues to the reader in perfect clarity. The Times simultaneously educates, informs and entertains the reader as they make their way through the book.
The judges for this year’s World’s Best Designed™ Newspaper were:
- Frank Mina, Assistant Managing Editor at the Seattle Times
- Lucie Lacava, Consultant
- Kate Elazegui, Design Director of Opinion at the New York Times
- Harry Hepburn, Lead Designer at the Telegraph
- Adolfo Arranz, Creative Director at the South China Morning Post
Judges with a publication conflict of interest were not involved in the conversations regarding that publication’s elevation to a finalist for World’s Best Designed™.
The 43rd competition ended with the jury of 27 judges awarding 18 gold medals, 68 silver medals and 798 awards of excellence. No Best in Show was awarded.