SND Best of Digital Design Competition, 2017

The Society for News Design (SND) has opened its annual Best of Digital Design Competition, for the best digital stories and products from 2017.

The goal of the competition is to identify the best of journalism that pushes the boundaries of design and technology.

The organizer will select and announce the World’s Best projects at the SND Annual Workshop and Exhibition Awards Dinner in Fall 2018. Competition judges may issue Awards of Excellence, Silver Medals, Gold Medals and Best of Show honors.

All websites, apps, social media design, and experimental products dedicated to the presentation of news may submit. It is not necessary that these sites are part of a newspaper or magazine organization.

The competition includes sixteen (16) different categories:

- World’s Best (Nominations)
- Breaking/Daily News: Single-subject project
- A single subject project represents work in a single news cycle.
- Breaking/Daily News: Planned coverage
- Breaking News planned coverage includes topics that can be prepared in anticipation of an event, but the final data and information is not available until the news occurs. Examples are elections or sports events.
- Breaking/Daily News: Non-planned coverage
- Breaking News non-planned coverage include topics that cannot be prepared for ahead of time. The coverage can include work over consecutive days if the information continues to change.
- Features: Single-subject project
- Individual piece of work.
- Features: Coverage
- Continued coverage of a particular topic, including at least three to eight individual pieces.
- Graphics: Breaking news
- One individual piece or continued coverage of a topic (three to five individual pieces) of a breaking news with graphics or combined graphics/data projects produced during the news cycle.
- Graphics: Features and planned coverage
- One individual piece or continued coverage of a topic (three to five individual pieces) of a features event or other enterprise project.
- Graphics: Motion graphics
- One individual piece or continued coverage of a topic (three to five individual pieces) that incorporates motion design and animation as the primary storytelling or explanatory device. Entries can include produced videos, code-based animation or social media videos.
- Graphics: Social media graphics
- Individual or a group of graphics from a story or series, on one specific social media platform or across the many different platforms.
- Special event: Natural Disaster Coverage
- One or more pieces — up to five individual pieces — related to natural disaster coverage in 2017, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires.
- Portfolio: New Sites and Redesigns
- Home, section and story pages as well as two to five other pages or examples. If submitting for redesign, submit examples showing judges before/after.
- Portfolio: Individual
- Portfolio of work for three to eight individual pieces. This body of work should be designed or have significant contributions by an individual designer.
- Portfolio: Organization
- Portfolio of work for — three to eight individual pieces. This body of work can be designed by different people, staff efforts. Use this category to showcase your organization’s design work across the board.
- Product Design
- Work that demonstrates the use of thoughtful or innovative product design or user experience design. This could include such things as newsletters, native apps, special sections, internal tools, design systems, etc.
- Experimental Design
- Products that don’t necessarily fit within any of the previous categories? For example: virtual reality product or a wearable product.

Further details:
SND Best of Digital Design Competition, 2017