He Chooses the Best Newspaper Design

The job is well-defined: choose the world's best-looking newspapers. The contest is for the Society for News Design (SND) and is one of the premier newspaper design contests in the U.S.

Yesterday, Editor-in-Chief Rickard Frank of Trelleborgs Allehanda, landed in New York to join the jury for jury for SND.

Frank is clear on what he's looking for. "It should be something that sticks out," he says. "A good presentation that hits hard will win the prize. But it's hard to differentiate between the design and the presentation. I see it more as a presentation prize where design and content work together."

The previous competition received 13,000 entries. The prizes are given out in a range of different classes according to the size of the newspaper.

Then entries will be displayed on a very long table at Syracuse University in New York, where it's up to the 22 jury members to judge them.

"It's very much about different tastes and traditions," says Frank. "Swedish newspapers differentiate themselves from Norwegian papers, for example. We have a seemingly endless number of newspaper cultures in the world. And it can be difficult to judge an entry if you don't understand the contents."

Frank was chosen as a jury member because of his design consulting experience combined with the fact that he's editor-in-chief. "Right before I started my job at Trelleborgs Allehanda, I developed a graphic concept that got a lot of attention in North America. Over 100 newspapers downloaded it and I know that SND thought it was exciting."

Frank says he hopes to take a lot of inspiration back with him to Sweden. "All my co-workers can expect some form of presentation when I come home," he says.