For winners of the 2012 PANZ Book Design Awards please visit our website dedicated to these awards. 

For winners of the 2011 PANZ Book Design Awards please visit our website dedicated to these awards.

New Zealand’s best book designers were celebrated at this year’s PANZ Book Design Awards which saw an outstanding group of winners emerge from a strong field.

2010’s Supreme Winner was The Life and Love of Trees by Lewis Blackwell, designed by Cameron Gibb. It is a book in which, said awards judge Peter Gilderdale, “the design choices and content came together to yield a breathtaking result.”

See the full list of 2010 PANZ Book Design Awards winners.

The baking bible Ladies, A Plate continued its success when it picked up the supreme Nielsen Award for Best Book at last night's PANZ Book Design Awards. Designed by Alan Deare from Inhouse Design, it also won the Best Illustrated category of the awards.

‘It isn't particularly flashy, nor particularly "designer". It is just right, and a deserved winner,' said Peter Gilderdale, the 2009 Convenor of Judges. He described Ladies, A Plate as a beautiful cookbook that also invites easy and continual use, and stressed that ‘the cover is a superb evocation of the tradition of home baking, yet … it turns the nostalgia crisp and contemporary'.

Also announced last night was the inaugural Awa Press Young Designer of the Year for a designer showing tremendous promise in the field of book design. Wellington?based designer Spencer Levine was commended for his ‘striking facility with space, type and concept' with five cover designs, which included the architecture book Long Live the Modern edited by Julia Gatley and Book Self by poet and critic C.K. Stead. Young designers Carolyn Lewis and Keely O'Shannessy were highly commended in this category, with their selection of work boding well for the future of book design.

The other new category for 2009, the G.A. Pindar & Son Award for Best Typography, was won by Sarah Maxey for her work on a new edition of How to Look at a Painting by Justin Paton. The award judges commented on how crucial good typography is to a book's readability, yet how it is often unnoticed. Maxey's work showed ‘a series of wonderful decisions' that became apparent after a closer look.

The judges of this year's awards – Peter Gilderdale, Guy Somerset and Graham Beattie highlighted the high?quality design in New Zealand publishing. The categories were hotly contested, and the judging was difficult. It emphasised, Gilderdale said, that New Zealand publishing is a ‘confident and talented industry with huge potential, and one that is well served by its designers. Long may it continue.'

Award winners

Nielsen Award for Best Book

Alan Deare, Inhouse Design for Ladies, A Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston (Penguin Group (NZ))

HarperCollins Publishers Award for Best Cover

Catherine Griffiths for A Short History of Photography by Harvey Benge with Gerry Badger (Random House (NZ) Ltd)

Awa Press Young Designer of the Year

Spencer Levine for Long Live the Modern edited by Julia Gatley, Book Self by C.K. Stead, Going Bush by Kirstie Ross, Settlers by Jock Phillips and Terry Hearn, Mrkusich by Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling (Auckland University Press)

G.A. Pindar & Son Award for Best Typography

Sarah Maxey for How to Look at a Painting by Justin Paton (Awa Press)

Random House New Zealand Award for Best Illustrated Book

Alan Deare, Inhouse Design for Ladies, A Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston (Penguin Group (NZ))

Hachette New Zealand Award for Best Non?Illustrated Book

Katy Yiakmis for Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes by Stevan Eldred?Grigg (Random House (NZ) Ltd)

Pearson Award for Best Educational Book

Marie Low and Esther Chua (interior), Marie Low (cover) for Saying What You See: How to Talk and Write About Art by Alison Annals, Abby Cunnane and Sam Cunnane (Pearson)

Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children's Book

Sarah Elworthy and Gavin Bishop for Piano Rock: A 1950s Childhood by Gavin Bishop (Random House (NZ) Ltd)

Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning, published by the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, cleaned up at the BPANZ Book Design Awards 2008 last night at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington.  The book won the Best Cover and Best Illustrated categories, then took home the prize for the Best Book.Christchurch-based designer Aaron Beehre's treatment of Hammond's renowned artwork stands alongside compelling typography, creating a book that truly impressed the judging panel. Convenor of Judges, Guy Somerset, says the winner "hovered above the other books like one of Hammond's birds".  The judges commented particularly on the innovative fold-out poster cover of Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning.

Dear to Me, a collection of poetry edited by Auckland Girls' Grammar School for Amnesty International, won the award for Best Non-Illustrated book.  The judges said designer, Alan Deare, has managed to create a small book with a big mentality. Its cover is dominated by bold type that jumps off the shelf and its simple original approach appeals to all readers.

The highly-anticipated Children's Book category was won by The King's Bubbles, a favourite in the local children's book awards scene this year.  The judges commented on Ruth Paul's magnificent use of vibrant colour in her illustrations for the book, but it was her and co-designer Mary McIntyre's handling of the text that gave The King's Bubbles the edge.

Astronomy Aotearoa, created for the NCEA Level 1 Science curriculum, won the Best Educational Book category.   That the book contained a wealth of scientific information for older children, seemed no handicap to designer Marie Low.  The judges felt her use of photographs, diagrams, illustrative motifs, coloured headings, breakout panels and freestyle layout was a welcoming approach to a big topic and made education fun.

Accompanying Guy Somerset on the judging Panel were bookseller, Mark Fry and magazine publisher, Michael McHugh.  Both are experienced book industry professionals, who found it a pleasure to rediscover books that had impressed them on first encounter over the past year.

Design is a crucial and often overlooked part of the bookmaking process, with these awards recognising the outstanding work of New Zealand designers and publishers. 2008 marks the first year the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand has filled the major sponsorship role of the awards.

Best Book

Eagle's Complete Trees & Shrubs of New Zealand
By Audrey Eagle
Designed by Neil Pardington (covers), Robyn Sivewright of Afineline (interior)
Published by Te Papa Press

 

Best Cover
Eagle's Complete Trees & Shrubs of New Zealand
By Audrey Eagle
Designed by Neil Pardington (covers), Robyn Sivewright of Afineline (interior)
Published by Te Papa Press

Best Illustrated Book

Eagle's Complete Trees & Shrubs of New Zealand
By Audrey Eagle
Designed by Neil Pardington (covers), Robyn Sivewright of Afineline (interior)
Published by Te Papa Press

Best Non-Illustrated Book
Brief Lives
By Chris Price

llustrated byr Brendan O'Brien
Designed by Sarah Maxey (cover), Katrina Duncan (interior)
Published by Auckland University Press

Best Educational Book
Te Kete Kupu
By Huia
Designed by Rose Miller
Published by Huia Publishers (NZ) Ltd

Best Children's Book
Legends of Ngatoro-i-rangi
By Karen Taiaroa-Smithies & Mervyn Taiaroa
Designed by Cheryl Rowe
Published by Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd

Best Book

Contemporary New Zealand Photographers

by Hannah Holm and Lara Strongman

Mountain View Publishing

Designer: Neil Pardington, Base Two

 

Best Cover

Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life

by Alexa Johnston

Penguin Group NZ

Designer: Alan Deare, Inhouse Design

Best Illustrated Book

Contemporary New Zealand Photographers

by Hannah Holm and Lara Strongman

Mountain View Publishing

Designer: Neil Pardington, Base Two

Best Non-Illustrated Book

Afternoon of an Evening Train

by Gregory O'Brien

Victoria University Press

Designers: Gregory O'Brien and Victoria University Press, Sarah Maxey (cover)

Best Educational Book

Frontier of Dreams: The Story of New Zealand (boxed set)

by John Parker

Scholastic NZ Ltd

Designer: Vasanti Unka

Best Children's Book

Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun

by Janet Frame, illustrated by David Elliot

Vintage, Random House New Zealand

Designer: Christine Hansen

Best Book, Best Cover

Shane Cotton

By Lara Strongman (City Gallery Wellington & VUP)

Designed by Neil Pardington

 

 

Best Typography

Clubs: A Lolly Leopold Story by Kate De Goldi and Jacqui Colley (Trapeze)

Designed by Jacqui Colley

Best Use of Illustration

The Night Kite by Peter Bland with illustrations by Carl Bland (Mallinson Rendel)

designed by Carl Bland with Margaret Cochran