2025 ABDA Award Winners
Drumroll, please! We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 73rd Australian Book Design Awards! Congratulations to all of the shortlisted and winning designers for the 73rd Australian Book Design Awards. A special thank you to our 2025 judges for committing their time and thoughtful consideration of each book – Alice Oehr, Jane Willson, Jordan […]
Student Prizes announced for 2020 ABDA Awards
For the very first time at the 2020 Australian Book Design Awards, ABDA will have two prizes dedicated solely to work by student designers from around the country. It’s a chance for us to celebrate and encourage the next generation of Australian book designers and an exciting move that has us all feeling positive about […]
2019 Awards – Save the Date!
The ABDA Committee is delighted to announce the 67th Australian Book Design Awards will be taking place in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales on Friday 31 May 2019, with tickets on sale in April! The Australian Book Design Awards celebrate the bravest and brightest, the most original and beautiful books published in Australia […]
Original Typography Showcase
Staff Picks—Sun Bookshop Favourite Book Covers
The latest in a series of interviews where we ask staff at bookstores to tell us about their favourite book designs. This month we hear from Kate O’Donnell and her colleagues at the Sun Bookshop, 10 Ballarat St, Yarraville. Kate O’Donnell’s picks Ickypedia by The Listies (Penguin Random House) Designed by Bruno Herfst & Richard Higgins The […]
ABDA & EWF Street Poster Collaboration
ABDA and the Emerging Writers Festival are partnering up on a street poster design event. We need fifteen book designers to design a street poster using a short text extract from one of the fifteen shortlisted entries of the Monash Prize for Emerging Writers. Posters will be plastered up on the Metro Tunnel hoardings on […]
Q & A with Ozan Tortop
Ozan Tortop is a Brisbane-based designer who begun his career in advertising before making his way to the wonderful world of books, in particular children’s book design. He is the co-founder of TadaaBook, where he helps independent children’s authors bring their books to life. Did you mean to end up as a book designer? What was […]
The Making of ‘Lifespan of Starlight’
A post by ABDA member Josh Durham Winning the Best Designed Young Adult Book at the 2016 Australian Book Design Awards, Josh Durham, aka Design by Committee, takes us behind the scenes of the cover design and series look. Lifespan of Starlight is the first book in a three-part YA series about a time travelling […]
Hall of Fame – W.H. Chong
W.H. Chong was awarded the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Design Hall of Fame Award in 2013. Below we revisit the interview published in the 2013 awards catalogue by Scribe art director Miriam Rosenbloom. Miriam Rosenbloom (MR): How did you find yourself designing book covers? W.H. Chong (WHC): It was thanks to Diana Gribble, who co-founded Text […]
The Art of Correspondence
Mary Callahan, the award-winning designer of ‘The Art of Reading’, shares the story of her design through correspondence with the book’s publisher. 16 October 2015, 11:58am Dearest M Brief as follows: Short synopsis In The Art of Reading each chapter explores a literary virtue – patience, curiosity, courage, pride, temperance, justice – reminding readers of […]
The Making of Magrit
A post by ABDA committee member Amy Daoud Winner of Best Designed Children’s Fiction Book and Designers’ Choice Children’s/Young Adult Cover of the Year at the 2017 Australian Book Design Awards, designer Amy Daoud shares the story behind the cover of Magrit. Nine-year-old Magrit has lived most of her life in an abandoned cemetery alongside her […]
Hall of Fame – Alec Bolton
A post by Michael Richards Before the formation of ABDA, the Australian Publishers Association was responsible for awarding the annual Book Design Awards. In 1995 the APA Hall of Fame Award was presented to Alec Bolton (1926–1996), publisher, designer, typesetter and printer. Alec worked as an editor with Angus and Robertson in Sydney and in London, with Ure […]