Results
The Society for News Design is proud to announce results from the 47th edition of the Creative Competition. Winners are selected by visual journalists to assess the best work published in 2025. Organizations from around the world were represented in the makeup of the judging panel.
For the first time, judges are convening in-person in two separate locations: the San Francisco Bay Area and Singapore. The San Francisco judging group will be evaluating print, digital, graphics and non-editorial entries. The Singapore judging group will be focused on evaluating graphics entries.
The Creative Competition honors excellence in visual storytelling, design and journalism produced in 2025. Winners are announced live during the competition. Our highest honors – World’s Best Designed Newspaper, World’s Best Designed Digital Presence, World’s Best Designer, World’s Best Emerging Designer and Best in Show – are announced shortly after the competition.
Related: Categories and how to enter
Results
Below is our database of 47th edition winners. Winners are not considered final until they’ve been verified after the competition is over. Use the filter and sort functions to view awards by entry, publication or category. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to see highlights of SND47 winners!
About the competition
The Creative Competition provides an opportunity for news organizations, universities and non-editorial teams to share the best work produced the previous year and receive recognition for excellence and innovation in visual storytelling. The competition also serves as a valuable learning experience for judges and volunteers. Judges recognize journalistic excellence in design, graphics, art direction and social media to identify visual storytelling that defines the state of the art.
Awards
World’s Best-Designed Newspaper and Digital Presence: SND recognizes publications, news sites or organizations for overall excellence. Entries will be evaluated on visual storytelling, use of resources including photography, illustration, infographics, news judgment, creative range, execution and voice.
World’s Best Designer: This award is given to the individual designer that has the strongest portfolio among all individual portfolio categories.
World’s Best Emerging Designer: This category recognizes designers with five or fewer years of professional experience with the strongest portfolio among other eligible individual portfolio categories. Eligible designers need to have started full-time work in 2020 or later. Entries are judged for excellence in design skills across a range of platforms or topics.
Best in Show: This award is the highest honor that individual entries can receive within the entire competition. Judges from across the room come together at the end of the competition to discuss and vote on one Best in Show winner for small and micro organizations and one Best in Show winner for medium and large organizations. The Best in Show winners must receive votes from two-thirds of the voting pool.
Gold Medals: Visual storytelling that defines the state of the art. These entries must be groundbreaking visually and technically — telling their story in the most powerful way imaginable. It should be nearly impossible to find anything deficient in any design discipline in a gold medal entry. These awards are rare to achieve and should not be handed out lightly. Entries receiving this award should be held up as the gold standard for the design community; even among Silver medal winners, these entries should shine. A judging team must unanimously agree to award a Gold medal.
Silver Medals: Visual storytelling that stretches the limits of the medium and the resources of that particular organization — representing an elevated level of execution and difficulty in pursuit of powerful storytelling. It should be difficult to find anything deficient in a Silver medal-winning entry. Entries receiving a Silver medal must display a mastery of aesthetic, skill and creativity that stands out among Bronze medal winners. At least 4/5 or 5/6 judges must vote yes to award a Silver medal.
Bronze Medals: Visual storytelling that goes beyond excellence. Entries receiving a Bronze medal must have an elevated level of aesthetic execution, creativity or degree of difficulty. Judges should consider the size of the organization, resources available to the creator and how accessible entries are to all readers. Even among Award of Excellence winner
Award of Excellence: Visual storytelling that is truly excellent. These entries are more than just technically or aesthetically competent — they employ thoughtful design to tell compelling stories that meet the criteria for the category in which they are being judged. It is appropriate to honor work that pushes the boundaries of creativity and originality, even if details of the entries could be improved. Judges are asked to be tough but fair. At least 3/5 or 4/6 judges must vote yes to award an Award of Excellence.
Judges
A jury of 41 judges were selected by the Best of News Design Competition Committee to evaluate each entry on how well it accomplishes its design objectives. SND strives for diversity in judges, who are journalism, new media and design experts from around the world. If judges had any apparent conflicts of interest on particular entries, they were not assigned to evaluate those entries.
Check back to read more about our SND47 judges!
About the committee
People Team
The role of the People sub-committee is to determine the number of judges, the number of judging teams and the makeup of those teams to support the judging process during the competition. They build the judging teams and create a robust database of past judges and potential future judges. This sub-committee also determines the number of volunteers needed for judging.
The SND47 People sub-committee is led by Allison Hong and includes Clarice Bajkowski , Georgina Piper, Jasen Lo, Lina Moreno, Rebecca Pazos, Richard Giliberto, Simon Scarr, Thomas Weyres, Yue Qiu, Zisiga Mukulu and Petri Salmén.
Logistics Team
The Logistics sub-committee determines the Call for Entries with combined print, digital and social editorial categories, student categories, and non-editorial categories. They also determine the criteria for Best in Show, World’s Best Designed Print and Digital and World’s Best Designer and World’s Best Emerging Designer. This sub-committee manages scheduling and all aspects of the judging event and judging documentation and maintains the competition committee’s tools and technologies including communication structure, results database and internal committee documents.
The SND47 Logistics sub-committee is led by Stephanie Hays and includes Adam Rogers, Georgina Piper, Jasen Lo, Micah Fluellen, Michelle Bloom, Nicole Vas, Shaun Martin, Talia Trackim, Thomas Weyres and Petri Salmén.
Communications and Outreach Team
The Communications and Outreach sub-committee creates social media strategy for competitions and identifies evergreen content that can be published year-round. They create an outreach strategy and communication plan to reach editorial and non-editorial organizations and student newsrooms. This sub-committee also reaches out to potential volunteers, creating a strategy for outreach to students, educators and professionals. They also create competition awards and certificates.
The SND47 Communications and Outreach sub-committee is led by Stephanie Redding and includes Andrew Siegfried, Chris Rukan, Kristin Bausch, Lina Moreno, Micah Fluellen, Michelle Bloom, Richard Giliberto, Steve Zimmerman, Tate Rudisill and Zachary Balcoff.
Special Initiatives Team
The Special Initiatives sub-committee researches improvements and updates to the competition, including the exploration of future competition platforms and the translation of the Call for Entries into Spanish and Mandarin. They also design and order competition memorabilia.
The SND47 Special Initiatives sub-committee is led by Jake Lovett and includes Brian Gross, Dakota Hendren, Greg Mees, Nicole Vas, Rebecca Pazos, Steve Zimmerman, Zachary Balcoff and Zisiga Mukulu.
Locations Team
The Locations sub-committee partners with Berkeley hosts Jeremy Sanchez Rue, Associate Dean at UC Berkeley Journalism, and Alex Fong, Creative Director at The San Francisco Chronicle, and Singapore host Rebecca Pazos, Asia Graphics Editor at Reuters, to host the in-person portions of the competition including space, food, Internet, hotels and travel logistics.
The SND47 Locations sub-committee is led by Tyler Remmel and includes Andrew Siegfried, Chris Rukan, Dakota Hendren, Kristin Bausch, Shaun Martin, Talia Trackim, Tate Rudisill, Tyler Remmel and Yue Qiu.
The SND47 Logo
This year’s logo was created by competition committee member, and former judge, Richard Giliberto. Read our Q&A with Richard about winning an SND46 Silver Medal for his Individual: Features/Magazine Portfolio.
History of the Annual Creative Competition
The annual Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition started in 1979, and the contest was opened to magazines in 2009 as the name changed to the Best of News Design. Since 2002, SND has invited entries from all news sites published anywhere in the world (formerly known as the SNDies) to recognize skill, innovation and high-quality digital journalism.