Recently by The Editors

SPD51: Instructions for Medal Finalists + Merit Winners

… MORE

PUB 50

CONGRATULATIONS Medal Finalists and Merit Winners! **CLOSED**

Looking to see the list of Medal Finalists? Click Here

                                Want to know if you are a Merit Winner?  Go Here

… MORE

PUB 49

… MORE

SPD 2014 Student Design Competition - NOW CLOSED

Every year, SPD holds a professional competition to find the best editorial design out there. Now students have the chance to be a part of this world-class event! 

CLICK HERE to get all the details, download the Official Rules & Entry Form PDF, and find tips and frequently asked questions.

… MORE

SPD 2013 Student Design Competition - NOW CLOSED

THE 2013 COMPETITION IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED. To enter our 2014 COMPETITION, get the details HERE.… MORE

Best of Collegiate Design 20 (cosponsored by the CMA)

SPD's Student Outreach Committee is co-sponsoring the 20th Annual Best of Collegiate Design competition with the College Media Association, honoring the best design work in student media over the past year.

If you worked on your school's newspaper, magazine, yearbook or online publication from May 15, 2011 thru May 14, 2012, enter your work to be considered by our expert panel of judges. Comprised of a variety of top-notch professionals from SPD and the CMA, your designs will be in front of an incredible group of talented eyes. Enter now for that opportunity!

Winning work will be published in a publication this fall, to be distributed and announced at the CMA's National College Media Convention this fall in Chicago, and featured on the SPD and CMA sites.

Deadline: May 15, 2012.

Official rules and entry instructions here.
Get updates on the competition Facebook page here and on their Twitter feed here.
… MORE

SPD 2012 Student Design Competition: CLOSED

This year's competition is now closed. Thanks to all who entered! Winners will be announced soon.… MORE

SPOTS! SPOTS! SPOTS! Fame, Glory, Awards + The Party. Enter Now.

Illustration is changing, showing up in unexpected ways, blurring borders, reinventing itself as a medium for bold expression in the digital age. Tightening budgets are breeding creative solutions. Digital publishing i smoking away from the stifling proliferation of photographic syndication, stock imagery, and sameness. Illustrators are moving to the forefront, providing the character and dynamism needed to stand out in a crowd of predictability.

And they're doing it with SPOTS.

The static full-page illustration is no longer the standard of excellence. In both printed and digital publications, the most exciting illustration weaves its way into the fabric of the story, makes trends tangible, tells the deeper truth, communicates identities, and often wins the spotlight for itself.

SPOTS honors the illustrations that outshine all the others when the spotlight comes around.

SPD is the only organization to honor this exciting, evolving artform with its annual SPOTS competition, a part of our mission to promote the best in editorial design, today and every day. Commissioned work by publications of any kind (printed or digital, paper or screen) is awarded, along with UNcommissioned work, pieces published only by you, the illustrator.

Download the forms and Call for Entries after the jump...
… MORE

2011 Student Design Competition

Every year, SPD holds a professional competition to find the best editorial design out there. Now students have the chance to be a part of this world-class event!

Enter up to 5 entries according to our categories and rules, and you could win cash prizes, the Adobe Creative Suite software and--perhaps best of all--an internship! Check out all the details below:

… MORE

SPD AWARDS: All Information, All The Time

We're gearing up to celebrate the best work of the year, across all disciplines. Here's a quick list of deadlines and links to Call for Entries so you can mark your calendar, and get those interns to work!


… MORE

COMPETITION CLOSED // SPOTS 2010: The Call for Entries. Medals! A Book! A Party! Enter now.

(Please note: this competition is closed. For the current SPOTS competition, please see this post.  --  The Editors)

Illustration is changing, showing up in unexpected ways, blurring borders, reinventing itself as a medium for bold expression in the digital age. Tightening budgets are breeding creative solutions. Online publishing initially brought a stifling proliferation of photographic syndication, stock imagery, sameness. Now illustrators are moving to the forefront, providing the character and dynamism needed to stand out in a crowd of predictability.

And they're doing it with SPOTS.
… MORE

PUB 45: All the Winners

SPD is proud to announce the full list of winners part of our 45th year, representing the best work created and printed in the 2009 editorial year, the rarest of Rare Specimens, joining a collection of work that stretches back to the beginnings of SPD in 1965 and today sets a new standard for excellence in visual communication.

After the jump, a list of all the winning magazines part of SPD's PUB 45 Competition... … MORE

SPD Digital: Judging Excellence in Editorial Design Across All Digital Platforms

NEW FINAL DEADLINE! Wednesday, April 7th at 5PM!

The SPD Digital Competition is the first competition to exclusively embrace and celebrate great editorial design being executed across all digital platforms--great design is platform agnostic! Send in your best work and be celebrated with the best of the best at the SPD Awards Gala in May, in the SPD PUB 45 hardcover Annual, and be put on a pedestal in the SPD.org Galleries.

We are also announcing this year, for the first time ever, the Site of the Year Awards where we'll crown the year's best website. To level the playing field we will offer two Site of the Year Awards for sites both with and without a print component.
 
Who can enter you ask? Web sites and other digital publications containing dynamic or regularly updated editorial content including text, pictures, video, audio, animation or a combination of any of these.

Keep reading after the jump for the list of jurors, rules and forms for entry...
… MORE

Student Design Competition: CLOSED

The deadline for this year's competition was Monday, March 8, so the competition is now closed. But we do it every year, and the rules are generally the same in case you want to start brainstorming already for next year.

Every year, SPD holds a professional competition to find the best editorial design out there. Now all you students have the chance to be a part of this world-class event! Enter up to 5 entries according to our categories and rules, and you could win cash prizes, the Adobe Creative Suite software and--perhaps best of all--an internship! Check out all the details below:


… MORE

PUB 45 Call For Entries: Rare Specimens Requested

Now in our 45th year, SPD's acclaimed "Rare Specimens" competition has cultivated hundreds of remarkable entries from the most knowledgeable and esteemed designers, photo editors and assorted editorial experts from around the civilized world. Taken together, these selected works promote and recognize champion editorial work from print and online manufacture; the jury reviews each specimen as to how it upholds the greatest of attributes in each of these principles: uniformity of overall structure, uniqueness, and clarity, as well as good taste and charm.

Rare specimens are now requested from all corners of the world, from the glossiest of the glossies to the ground-breaking alt-weeklies, from online video and blog reporting to limited-run 'zines and local broadsheets, from corporate missives to specialty niche publications. Download entry forms & rules here.

Entries due by FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2010 without a late penalty.

2009 has been a challenging, tumultuous year in our industry, but one that has proven the rule: from great challenges can come some of the best solutions. Inspire your colleagues!

PUB 45: And the Jury Is...

As you begin to sift through your work from 2009, selecting your own Rare Specimens from the Editorial world to submit to SPD's PUB 45 Competition, you'll be encouraged to know that your work, your best work, side-by-side on the table with the best work from your peers, is being judged by the best of the best as well:

COMPETITION CO-CHAIRS:
Debra Bishop, CD, More
Casey Tierney, DP, Real Simple

Captains and the jury, as well as some special notes about the judging, after the jump...
… MORE

The Best in Show: PUB 44 Medal Winners

After a glorious Gala Friday night, we're still recovering a bit, but wanted to put out a huge congrats to ALL of the Gold and Silver Medal winners, and the Merit Winners, of SPD's PUB 44. Just 10% of the total entries in January were selected overall, which is a huge, huge accomplishment!

As we work to finish adding the almost 700 winners of PUB 44 to the Galleries (check back here by the end of the week!) we're happy to post a full list of the Gold & Silver winners after the jump, or you can download a pdf of the press release here, and check back for party pictures as we get them (and if you've got them, send them in!). Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate the work, and more importantly, the fabulous people who DO the work: you're the reason we can do this! And now, we're off to soak our feet a bit more; you, check out these winners...
… MORE

SPOTS! The 2009 Competition Begins...

"Spot" illustrations may be small in size, but they play an enormous role in the world of publication design. Measuring no more than 5 x 6 inches, a spot much catch readers' eyes, draw them into a story, and convey complex ideas--often while competing with other visual elements on the page.

The Society of Publication Designers is the only organization to honor these hard-working little gems with its annual SPOTS Competition. Chaired this year by Matthew Lenning, Design Director at Bon Appétit, and Don Morris, Principal at Don Morris Design, SPOTS will be judged by a panel of leading publication art directors and commercial illustrators, with the winning entries will be featured in a special, self-contained book and sent to SPD members and winning illustrators for FREE, as well as featured in the PUB 44 Design Annual, and archived in a special gallery on this very site, linking to the winning illustrator's websites.

Read on for all the details, the call for entries, and links to past winners...

*Big thanks to Yuko Shimizu for the illustration on the Call for Entries, above!
… MORE

PUB 44 Online Winners!

Without further ado, the Medal Finalists for SPD's PUB 44 Online Competition, chosen by the jury and presented here:


The Big Picture // Category: Online Photography

CHOW: The Ten // Category: Series or Column

The Daily Beast // Category: Online Site Independent of a Print Publication

The NY Times: 2008 Presidential Election Results // Category: Online Information Graphics

The NY Times: A Map of Olympic Medals // Category: Online Information Graphics
 

The Gold and Silver Medals are awarded from across all of the Online Categories based on highest overall scores. One of these sites will be winning a Gold Medal, and one a Silver Medal, at the SPD Gala on Friday, May 8th. Keep reading after the jump for the full list of Online Merit Winners, ready for you to browse as well...

… MORE

PUB 44: ALL THE WINNERS

As we get ready for the Gala on Friday, May 8th (invitations printing now, videos being produced, medals being cut, tuxes cleaned and dresses fitted, copious amounts of cocktail mixers amassed), we wanted to take a moment to congratulate all the titles that are winners of the print competition (listed after the jump):
… MORE

PUB 44 Online Competition: New & Updated Categories!

NEW! IMPROVED! Two of our favorite words.
EXTRA TIME. Our very favorite.

Our Online Chair, Jeremy LaCroix, and his team of judges have studied the categories for the Online Competition and improved on what we had, adding categories for online features like photo slideshows, online columns, editorial blogs, mobile apps, and more. Online editorial work is changing daily, and as SPD members work and innovate more and more both in print and online, it's our goal to keep up with the new work, and continue to recognize the best of the best.

Download the newly updated ONLINE Call for Entries, and send in your editorial online work with NO LATE FEES by Wednesday, March 4th!

Oh yeah, one more thing: Help us spread the word to your online peers who may not be aware of SPD and PUB 44! Let's get them involved!

PUB 44 Online: Meet the Jury

The Online Competition of PUB 44 has an amazing jury, selected by this year's Online Chair, Jeremy LaCroix, Creative Director for CBS Interactive:

Ian Adelman
Creative Director / New York Magazine online

Michael Bierut
Graphic Designer, Design Critic and Educator
Pentagram / Yale School of Art

Jason Santa Maria
Graphic Designer, Consultant,  Creative Director / A List Apart

Paul Schrynemakers
Creative Director / Rodale online / Men's Health / Runner's World / Prevention


More info about these judges who'll be selecting the Online Gold, and a copy of the Online Call for Entries, after the jump...
… MORE