The Jury President for Magazine & Newspaper Design shares his thoughts on the issues facing the category in 2020 with Design Week Editor Tom Banks. Judged in person, this category is in the midst of the changes brought to bear in the publishing industry since much of it began to migrate online in the wake of the pandemic.

Burgoyne praises the design and editorial teams at the New York Times for their consistency and belief in design, and he commends the inventiveness and attention to detail of local authority newsletter Dínamo, produced for the Spanish city of Murcia by Rubio y del Amo. These projects, sitting at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of budget, both caught his eye.

Yellow Pencil-winners Buffalo and The 1619 Project by the New York Times won big with the jury for completely different reasons. “Buffalo gleefully plays around with form and format. They entered several issues and it just felt like: here’s a team having a huge amount of fun and really knows its industry inside out, which enables them to play with stuff while at the same time maintaining the same kind of quality,” enthuses Burgoyne.

For those graduating and starting out in newspaper and magazine design he had this advice: “Magazines and publishing are going through a tough time but we’ve never had so many exciting independent magazine titles than we have right now, in a way magazines are stronger than they ever were.”