The ABDA committee is pleased to announce the judges for the 2021 awards. With experiences across 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 past year.

 

 

AKIKO CHAN has been working as a book designer since late 2018. Prior to that, she worked at branding agencies, design studios, as well as freelancing for her own clients. Akiko worked in New York City for a few years, in marketing for publishing. She now works part-time at Black Inc. Books and collaborates with other publishers on a range of covers and internal design projects. Akiko believes in book design as an inherently collaborative process. A believer in experimentation, she often incorporates custom image-making, illustration or lettering into her work.

 

 

SUE DANI is an award-winning educational book designer with over 15 years experience in educational publishing. Her design career began when an opportunity arose in a niche publishing house working with the challenges of magazine design and layout. This was the springboard that propelled her to work across the gamut of design, art direction, illustration, printing and publishing. Sue is currently Design Manager at Oxford University Press and has been instrumental in refreshing the OUP brand.

 

 

DR JENNY GRIGG is an Australian graphic designer and lecturer in the School of Design at RMIT University. Her professional career includes positions such as Art Director at Rolling Stone Magazine Australia, MTV Australia, and Senior Designer at Pentagram in London. Continually active in book design, Jenny has designed for Faber and Faber, Granta Books, Peter Carey, Paul Auster and Eleanor Catton and is currently the art director for Giramondo Publishing. Her achievements in the field have been recognised by many design awards, a 2011 State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship, listing in Who’s Who of Australian Women and induction into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2020. She researches design history and material literacy in graphic design ideation.

 

 

DOMINIC HOFSTEDE established his own practice in the mid-1990s. Hofstede Design (1996-2015) was renowned for its commitment to typographic craft, particularly in the disciplines of identity design and publishing. Following a three-year period as Executive Creative Director for MAUD Melbourne, he joined the international design studio Mucho in 2020 as its first Australian partner. In 2009, he established recollection.com.au, an online archive of Australian graphic design from 1960 to 1990. The project has resulted in numerous research outcomes including two books. In 2014 he was appointed an adjunct senior research fellow at Monash Art, Design and Architecture.

 

 

NA KIM is a multi-disciplinary artist, and the associate creative director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She frequently contributes illustrations to publications such as The New Yorker and The New York Times, and her book cover designs have been featured as one of The New York Times Book Review’s ‘Best Book Covers of the Year’ for the past five consecutive years. She graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009 with a BFA in illustration, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

MIRIAM ROSENBLOOM is the founder and publisher of Scribble — Scribe’s first children’s imprint. Since launching in 2016, Scribble has won many local and international awards, including the 2019 BOP-Bologna Prize Best Children’s Publishers of the Year for Oceania. Scribble focuses on books that both kids and adults will delight in, and that reflect the many varied experiences of our shared lives and communities. Prior to working in children’s publishing, Miriam had worked for over a decade as a book designer in London and Melbourne. Her background in book design, and passion for design and illustration, are at the heart of Scribble’s books.

 

 

STEPHANIE SPARTELS has been working as a designer and illustrator in the publishing industry for over a decade. Since the establishment of Studio Spartels in 2010, she has been busy creating visual concepts for all kinds of fiction, non-fiction, YA and children’s books. Her illustrations have appeared in magazines, a 20-book series and most recently in Me Time by Jessica Sanders. She has a knack for delving into the heart of a story and producing work that is captivating, concept driven and lovingly crafted.

 

 

ZIGA TESTEN is a graphic and book designer based in Melbourne, Australia. Typically the focus of his practice is contemporary art and culture and he prioritise work in close collaboration with artists, writers, curators and cultural organisations in Australia and internationally. The output of his studio is diverse as rather than an aesthetic or style, a context and project specific solution is sought out for each individual commission.