Judge at SND47, Berkeley

Lot’s of work, fun and a great honour to serve as a judge at SND 47 at UC Berkeley, San Francisco Bay area in April.

The Society for News Design (SND) is an international organization for news media professionals and visual communicators.

This year SND 47 evaluated more than 4,300 entries from organizations across the world and awarded:

• 1,298 Awards of Excellence
• 268 Bronze Medals
• 72 Silver Medals
• 24 Gold Medals

My first team, day 1, was Golden trout and second team was 2 days with; Red legged frog where we had a chance to see the state of world class news and observe any new news design and storytelling trends. On the final day all judge looks at Best in Show.

— I enjoyed all the talks in my teams that gave perspectives on why something is awarded, our craft, industry and proffesion.

New this year is the SND 47, was held in two separate locations, Berkeley and Singapore, — a landmark expansion of the organization’s global footprint.

This year the studio received a Bronze for the Brand refresh of Aftonbladet

My designs have previously won multiple awards, including Best in Show and World’s Best Designed by SND.

Workshop at Berkeley Journalism

The final day was a member workshop for all participants and professionals with 6 speakers on a wide range of areas.

— I’m really honoured to been an invited speaker at SND 47. 

In the talk; Trust the news I gave a first look at the ”News without Noise”, an AI-assisted daily news briefing and shared the new platform’s design and key lessons on designing news brands with trust for AI-based news media. The platform is set to launch in 2026.

The Berkeley event and judging was hosted by San Francisco Chronicle Creative Director and SND Vice President Alex K Fong. Berkeley was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, 1964 and is a world renowned research university.

Photo (main): Andy Kirk and portrait: Dakota Hendren, SND.