Stack awards: Best use of illustration

The Stack Awards 2015 is our attempt to recognise the best work done by independent magazines this year. It’s a bit of an experiment, and as with all experiments, we’re learning as we go.

Best use of illustration
We’d initially decided that it should be based on the work of just one illustrator, but as we’ve spoken to publishers over the last couple of weeks we’ve realised that it actually makes more sense to have the judges consider illustration throughout an entire issue of a magazine. So we’re making a change.

The focus will still be on characterful and distinctive illustrations that help to give a magazine a clear identity, but rather than looking for illustrations by a single artist, the judges will now be considering the overall illustrative impact of a whole issue. But who are these judges who will be poring over the pages?

Thomas James
An illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post amongst others, Thomas is the editor and creative director of Illustration Age, the popular blog and professional resource.

Annabelle Fernandez
A die-hard magazine obsessive for as long as she can remember, Annabelle is the co-founder and curator of Magpie, a retailer of independent specialty magazines in Singapore, where she selects and sells a rotating mix of new and established titles.

We’ll be creating our shortlist of magazines on 9 October and sending them to Thomas and Annabelle, so if you’d like to be considered, get your entry in asap. The Stack Awards is open to all independent publishers and we want to make sure we include magazines from far and wide.

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Find more information on all the categories and enter the Stack Awards 2015. Good luck!