The start of 2021 was a rough one for SND. In December of 2020, the organization lost two leaders, and SND was faced with a time of crisis and reflection.
SND continued to prioritize the safety of our members and volunteers. For the first time in our history, both our Print and Digital Creative Competitions were virtual gatherings. Judges moved their collaborative process onto computer video cameras and in disparate locations.
The judges were inspired to see a maturity in visual journalism that is durable and sustaining in a year of unimaginable challenges. There was no evidence in any of the entries of the industry’s particular difficulties in creating and manufacturing a distributed product day after day, week after week; the excellence and integrity were undiminished.
After three days of discussion, judges in the Society for News Design’s Creative Competition, the judges named two publications as World’s Best Designed Newspaper. One of them was Weekendavisen.
Like 2020, we were not able to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of Weekendavisen in person. Now, we will. SND will gather to celebrate Weekendavisen, and many other World’s Best winners on Oct 21, 2022, in Washington DC at our awards dinner, SND Honors.
A limited number of tickets are still available, if you would like to join us in celebrating our SND winners. registration closes Oct, 6, 2022.
Let’s take a look back at what the Best of Print News Design competition judges had to say about Weekendavisen.
“This Danish weekly is thoughtful, refined and filled with a subtle sense of humor in its visual details throughout. Started in 1749, redesigned for a relaunch in 2020 with expanded culture coverage, Weekendavisen illuminates with its smart blend of legacy and modernity. This newspaper is daring, ambitious and often playful in its approach to covering a full range of global topics. A mastery of the basic principles of news design undergirds the jazz riffs in Weekendavisen—the exaggerated quote marks, the tiny icons and spot illustrations populating the pages to clever effect, the switchups in color and defining folios—all elegantly build both framework and identity.
There’s sophistication in the photo editing, a wide variety at play across news, portraiture, conceptual and collaged images. A variety of typography is used to boldly define sections, highlight conversations, and gracefully define navigation. Illustration includes a full range of styles—adeptly mixing the modern with the classic, the unexpected with the ironic.
The images and graphic touches in Weekendadvisen do not dominate, but provide an alternate story that enhances a richly textured reading experience. To all this, Weekendavisen adds tightly edited headlines and a discipline on story length to create a complicit conversation with the reader. Balanced and well-crafted, it’s a wonderful newspaper.”