The Society for News Design is proud to announce results from the 46th edition of the Best of News Design Creative Competition. Winners were selected by 42 visual journalists who gathered April 15-17 at the Minnesota Star Tribune’s headquarters in Minneapolis to assess the best work published in 2024. More than 29 organizations from around the world were represented in the makeup of the judging panel.
The Best of News Design Creative Competition honors excellence in visual storytelling, design and journalism produced last year. This was the first year of a newly-combined competition that included print, digital, student and non-editorial work.
Results
Below are the winners from the 46th edition. The database is searchable. Use the filter and sort functions to view awards by entry, publication or category. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, X and LinkedIn to see highlights.
SND46 Recap
The 46th Best of News Design Creative Competition ended with the jury awarding 14 gold medals, 78 silver medals, 254 bronze medals and 1,570 awards of excellence out of nearly 5,000 entries. Thirty two percent of all entries received an Award of Excellence while seven percent of all entries received a bronze, silver or gold medal. The New York Times’ Staff Opinion portfolio was awarded Best in Show.
Judges named two publications winners of the prestigious World’s Best Designed Newspaper distinction: de Volkskrant and Politico Europe. Five publications were named finalists for the award: The Minnesota Star Tribune, El País, de Volkskrant, Politico Europe and Die Zeit.
Two organizations were awarded the World’s Best Digital Designed: The Pudding and The Washington Post. Four organizations were also recognized by judges as finalists: The Pudding, The New York Times, ProPublica and The Washington Post.
Fernando Baptista of National Geographic Magazine was named World’s Best Designer for his infographics portfolio. Emma Kumer of The Washington Post won the competition’s first World’s Best Emerging Designer award for her social media portfolio.
The top 10 award-winning publications from SND46 were:
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- South China Morning Post
- Reuters
- The Minnesota Star Tribune
- The Straits Times
- Globe & Mail
- Politico Europe
- Die Zeit
- National Geographic Magazine
About the Best of News Design Creative Competition
The Best of News Design competition provides an opportunity for newsrooms to share the best work produced the previous year and receive recognition for excellence and innovation in news design. The competition also serves as a valuable learning experience for judges and volunteers. Judges recognize journalistic excellence in storytelling, graphics, art direction and social media to identify visual journalism that defines the state of the art.
Awards
World’s Best Designed Newspaper and Digital: SND recognizes publications, news sites or organizations for overall excellence. Entries are 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 2019 or later. Entries are judged for excellence in design skills across a range of platforms or topics.
Best in Show: SND Digital’s Best in show is meant to recognize the best individual entry from 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. The Best in Show winner must win by a two-thirds majority. If that majority is not met, a Best in Show winner will not be awarded.
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 a Gold medal-winning 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 42 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.
The 46th edition judges included:
- Beto Alvarez, The Los Angeles Times
- Melissa Angle, McClatchy
- Clarice Bajkowski, The 19th
- Kristin Bausch, The Marshall Project
- Anna Boone, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Fabián Cárdenas, Diario La República
- Steve Dorsey
- Rick Epps, Michigan State University
- Ken Harper, Syracuse University
- Katty Huertas, The Washington Post
- Pei Ying Loh, Kontinentalist
- Lina Moreno, Süddeutsche Zeitung
- Zisiga Mukulu, ProPublica
- Rebecca Chew, The New York Times
- Caitlin Choi, The Wall Street Journal
- Jade Cuevas, POLITICO
- Arne Depuydt
- Naasha Dotiwala, Gannett
- Ryan Ford, Detroit Free Press
- Brennan Higginbotham, The Globe & Mail
- Waleed Rabin, Kavak
- Denise M. Reagan
- Amanda Reiter, MediaNews Group
- Luis G. Rendon
- Jake Stevens, American City Business Journals
- Adolfo Arranz, Reuters
- Manuel Cabrera Patiño
- Darla Cameron, The Texas Tribune
- Matt Chwastyk, National Geographic
- Kaeti Hinck, CNN Digital
- Lee Pei Jie, The Straits Times
- Jasen Lo, The Philadelphia Inquirer
- Rocio Marquez Salguero, South China Morning Post
- Georgina Piper, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
- Petri Salmén, Helsingin Sanomat
- Jin Wu, Bloomberg
- Alex K. Fong, San Francisco Chronicle
- Sónia Matos, PÚBLICO
- Frank Mina, The Seattle Times
- Danielle Rindler, Hearst Newspapers
- Søren Nyeland, POLITIKEN
- Tammy Yttri, Lee Enterprises
Our Volunteers
This year there were 20 volunteers from around the world. They include:
- Alejandro Vazquez, The Los Angeles Times
- Amina Williams, UNC-Chapel Hill
- Ava Rose Isham, Michigan State University
- Carrie-Anne Rogers, UNC-Chapel Hill
- Chris Rukan, The Washington Post
- Daisy Chung, Reuters
- Dakota Hendren, Michigan State University
- Edison Wu, UC Berkeley
- Ellie Lin, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Emily Wright, The Washington Post
- Gloria Orbegozo, The Los Angeles Times
- Hailey Haymond, The Washington Post
- JaTasia Powers, Michigan State University
- Josh Chen, The Washington Post
- Josh Jones, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Madalyne Bird, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Rachael Stach, Michigan State University
- Tate Rudisill, Michigan State University
- Yuquing Liu, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Yutao Chen, The Washington Post
About the Competition Committee
The Best of News Design Competition Committee includes 33 journalists from newsrooms across the world. The committee oversees the direction of each year’s competition, selecting judges, facilitating the judging and maintaining the call for entries. Greg Mees of the Minnesota Star Tribune is chair of SND’s Creative Competition.
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 SND46 People sub-committee is led by Tyler Remmel (The Washington Post) and includes Richard Giliberto, Thomas Weyres and Yue Qiu (Bloomberg).
Entries and Audit Team
The Entries and Audit sub-committee determines the Call for Entries with combined print and digital editorial categories, student categories, and non-editorial, content marketing and advertorial 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.
The SND46 Entries and Audit sub-committee is led by Brian Gross (The Washington Post) and includes Adam Rogers, Nicole Vas (The Los Angeles Times), Rick Epps (Michigan State University), Shaun Martin (American City Business Journals), and Simon Scarr (Reuters).
Logistics Team
The Logistics sub-committee manages scheduling and all aspects of the judging event and judging documentation, and creates competition awards and certificates. They also secure all aspects of hosting in-person competitions including space, food, Internet, hotels and travel logistics. This sub-committee maintains the competition committee’s tools and technologies including communication structure, results database and internal committee documents.
The SND46 Logistics sub-committee is led by Stephanie Hays (The Washington Post) and includes Allison Hong (The Los Angeles Times), Talia Trackim (The Washington Post) and Jake Lovett (the Minnesota Star Tribune).
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.
The SND46 Communications and Outreach sub-committee is led by Stephanie Redding (American City Business Journals) and includes Michelle Bloom (Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals), Carson Elm-Picard (ESPN), Steve Zimmerman (American City Business Journals, Zachary Balcoff (Michigan State University) and Andrew Siegfried (Michigan State University).