Janet Froelich and John Grimwade will be honored at the 40th Annual Workshop & Exhibition and Awards Gala of the Society for News Design. The ceremony will be on Friday, March 23, starting at 5:30 p.m. at The New School in New York City.
It’s with great pleasure that we introduce the SND Lifetime Achievement Award winners for 2018: Janet Froelich and John Grimwade. Our honorees have had great influence on some of the world’s finest publications.
As art director and creative director at The New York Times for 22 years, Froelich directed storytelling on the pages of The New York Times Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine where she came up with hundreds of cover images. She later served as creative director at Real Simple, a magazine with 2 million subscribers.
“She taught me how to think and edit visually,” wrote Gerald Marzorati, former Editor-in-Chief, The New York Times Magazine, in a 2006 tribute to Froelich.
Immediately after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Froelich spoke with two artists who had been working in a studio on the 91st floor of the north World Trade Center tower. That conversation inspired the memorable Times Magazine cover and was a visualization of what would later become the “Tribute in Light” memorial in NYC.
“(The cover) became not only an icon of the tragic attack but inspired a real-world, scaled-up doppelganger: actual lights projected upwards, ghost-limb-like, from Ground Zero, just like our cover,” wrote Marzorati. “Our most memorable cover. Ever.”
Froelich has won more than 60 gold and silver awards from graphic design organizations including SND, the Art Director’s Club, The Society of Publication Design and more. She was inducted into the Art Director’s Hall of Fame in 2006.
John Grimwade has created visual explanations as graphics director for Condé Nast publications, the Times of London, and as a contributor to more than 30 other major magazines including Popular Science and Eight by Eight, a soccer magazine that was the SPD’s Magazine of the Year in 2015.
All the while, he’s been teaching and mentoring visual journalists around the world at conferences, in classrooms and with his blog, “Infographics for the People.” Currently assistant professor at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, Grimwade also taught for years at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He co-hosts the annual “Show Don’t Tell” workshop at Malofiej Infographic World Summit in Pamplona, Spain.
“Even before John was a professor he was a teacher, thanks to all of his great workshop and conference work,” said Kris Viesselman, Editor in Chief at CQ Roll Call.
“John uses his blog to promote the power of visual communication to help everyone understand infographics and data visualizations,” said Tim Goheen, friend and colleague at Ohio University. “He wants infographics to ‘be inclusive, not exclusive.’ In a true sense, the blog is John. He is for the people. He is for students. I see it every day. He sets the bar high, but is willing to help you climb over it.”
Froelich and Grimwade will receive their awards in person at the 40th Anniversary Workshop and Awards Gala of the Society for News Design, March 22-24. The ceremony will be on Friday, March 23, starting at 5:30 p.m., at The New School in New York City.
Please join us at SND/NYC to celebrate their contributions to the Society and to the world of journalism. If you are unable to attend the full Workshop, you can purchase a ticket to the awards ceremony here.