De Morgen named ‘World’s Best Designed Newspaper’

Belgian daily De Morgen has won the World's Best-Designed Newspaper award. The annual Society for News Design (SND) contest this year selected De Morgen as the winner from more than 200 entries. SND, an international organisation for news media professionals and visual communicators, chose four winners on Saturday in Washington, DC: De Morgen, the Danish Politiken, the British Guardian and the Swedish Dagens Nyheter.

The New York Times was also nominated, as was the Washington Post. But not one to be influenced by the size of a publication, SND in the end chose De Morgen as the winner of the prestigious award.

"I totally did not expect this, because we are just a small newspaper in Belgium," says art director Arne Depuydt. With his team and Polish designer Jacek Utko, Depuydt last year worked on the new design for De Morgen, “an almost perfect mix of illustration and photography”, according to the five-member jury, which pointed out that a well-designed paper is more than a good cover, with an energy that flows from page to page.