The ABDA committee is pleased to announce the judges of the 2020 awards. With experience across a wide range of publishing, design, academic and retail platforms, we’re thrilled to have them on board to uncover the best and brightest, most original and beautiful designs of the last year.

 

SUZANNE DEAN has worked in at Penguin, Picador and is now Creative Director at Vintage Penguin Random House UK. Her well known design include, Sapiens, The Handmaid’s Tale, Atonement, H is for Hawk, When Breath becomes Air and The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time. She is also responsible for the Vintage Classics and Murakami Series designs amongst others.

 

 

DAVINA BELL is an award-winning writer for young people of many ages and a children’s book editor. Having started her career at Penguin Australia, she’s worked in the publishing industry for over a decade and is now the Commissioning Editor at Affirm Press in Melbourne. Her books include All the Ways To Be Smart, All of the Factors of Why I Love Tractors, and her forthcoming YA novel, The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love.

 

 

CHRIS CROUCH owns and runs design and gift bookshop Happy Valley in Collingwood. Happy Valley celebrated its sixth birthday recently.

 

 

 

TRISHA GARNER  has been designing books for nearly 2 decades. A prior winner of Best Designed Book of the Year at the Book Design Awards, Trisha designs for a wide range of publishers from her studio in Collingwood. She also works on graphic design projects for clients, with stints of sessional teaching at RMIT.

 

 

JESSICA HORROCKS is a designer and production coordinator at Text Publishing, where she has worked since 2015. Prior to this she had a brief stint in the design department of an advertising agency and a longer one in the production department of an educational publisher. She won Emerging Designer of the Year at the 2019 Australian Book Design Awards.

 

 

OLGA LAVECCHIA is currently Creative Director at Cengage Australia. She has a long career in design, predominately as a designer in the publishing industry. Having won a number of book design awards over her career and in 2007 winning Cover of the Year. Now, she collaborates with print, digital and design researchers, improving design excellence not only in visual context but also engaging design methods to impact product experiences and service journeys.

 

 

ALICE LINDSTROM is a Melbourne based illustrator. Alice works in papercut and collage, using cut and paste techniques to create painterly collages. Alice has illustrated picture books with publishers including Little Hare, Scribble Books and Quarto Kids UK. Alice has also provided the illustrations for a number of book covers for Penguin Random House and Harper Collins. (photograph by Breeana Dunbar)

 

 

BECI ORPIN is a creative practitioner based in Melbourne, Australia.  Her work occupies a space between illustration, design and craft. Beci has run her studio for over 20 years, catering to a wide range of clients, as well as exhibiting her work both locally and internationally.  She has authored and illustrated  four D.I.Y books and three children’s titles.  Her work is described as colourful, graphic, bold, feminine and dream-like, and she has been referred to as a ‘national treasure’.

 

MICHAEL WILLIAMS is the Director of the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas in Melbourne. He has worked at the Wheeler Centre since inception in 2009, when he was hired as the Head of Programming before being appointed as Director in September 2011.