Star earns awards for digital design
Projects created in 2020 clinch Awards of Excellence at international Digital News Design Competition
An investigative project, a COVID-19 dashboard and an interactive game were recognized by the international Best of Digital News Design competition,
The Toronto Star’s digital team won three Awards of Excellence at the 42nd Best of Digital News Design Competition organized by the U.S.-based nonprofit Society for News Design.
The international awards received entries from all over the world; major global news outlets such as the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post were recognized for innovative design.
The Star’s investigative project titled “The Uncounted,” a six-part series on the plight of individuals affected by occupational diseases, won in the Story Page Design: National category.
The series was produced by Greg Mercer of the Waterloo Region Record while the Star’s Nathan Pilla, Andres Plana, McKenna Deighton, Tania Pereira and Fadi Yaacoub worked on the digital design elements of the project.
And the Star’s COVID-19 dashboard won the Award of Excellence in the Format: Use of Data category of the competition. The dashboard, created by the Star’s data team, tracks the spread of the coronavirus in all Canadian provinces and territories.
It consists of visualizations for COVID-19 cases and deaths since the lockdowns began and allows readers to get a sense of how the various regions are faring during the pandemic.
In the Infographics: Health/ Coronavirus category, an interactive news game created by digital designer Deighton won the Award of Excellence.
The piece, titled “Testing the limits: How Toronto’s common areas might work when COVID-19 restrictions start to loosen,” offers readers a chance to test their physical distancing skills when they are out in various congregate settings during the pandemic.
Deighton said she knew readers would benefit from an interactive experience rather than just being told to stay two metres apart.
“From an experience perspective, it is a lot more impactful for readers to actually have to place their character in these different social scenarios,” Deighton said. The interactive experience did really well in terms of engaging with audiences and especially attracted young readers to the Star’s platform, Deighton added.
“It’s always fantastic to be recognized with international awards, but what I love most about this is the public service nature of the work,” said Irene Gentle, Editor of the Toronto Star.
“The pandemic created a real need to help people sort through complex and evolving science and data in a digestible way. That had the Star’s small and talented digital design team in overdrive all year to create. The team worked hard to cut through noise, confusion and misinformation to provide accessible interactives and dashboards people could use to make informed decisions to keep them and loved ones safe.
“And ‘Uncounted’ is a terrific example of accountability journalism, produced by our sister paper The Record and boosted and amplified by the design team here. This is true public service journalism and I’m thrilled to see this team recognized for it,” she added.
Deighton said her non-journalistic background uniquely enabled her to create the interactive experience. “Designdriven news and narratives should be at the forefront of today’s reporting,” she said.
“Recognition like this validates the work we do and goes on to exemplify how design based experiences are valuable, and people respond to them in a way that they don’t with traditional journalism.”