SINGAPORE - Is cycling the way to go for Singapore's car-lite vision? Why has there been a spate of wild animal sightings in urban Singapore?
An interactive take on these hot topics and other issues helped The Straits Times win eight awards of excellence from the Society for News Design (SND), up from two awards it bagged last year.
The prizes were for digital graphics and online projects ranging from experimental design for its interactive Smart Nation project to its feature No One Dies Alone, which followed the eponymous programme by Assisi Hospice whose volunteers and staff kept a dying man company.
ST also won an award given to media organisations with a strong portfolio of work, as well as an individual award for its senior creative director Rodolfo Pazos, 36, who was involved in most of the winning works.
The United States-based SND, which encourages high standards of journalism through design, announced the results for the 2017 edition of its Best of Digital Design Competition last week.
Three gold medals, 42 silver medals and 440 awards of excellence were given out from a pool of more than 1,000 entries from nearly 60 publications.
Other winners of the annual competition include The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times and Thomson Reuters.
Last year, ST won two awards for its digital news packages on swimmer Joseph Schooling's Olympic win and the global migrant crisis.
"The SND is made up of highly respected media professionals, and well known in the media industry for its commitment to quality content and design," said Mr Warren Fernandez, ST editor and editor-in-chief of Singapore Press Holdings' English, Malay and Tamil Media Group.
"So, to receive this validation of excellence from them is very encouraging to all of us in the ST newsroom indeed. It should signal to our readers that our efforts to keep striving to produce better digital content are yielding results."
ST's winning entries include a project on Singapore's wild animals which integrated photos, videos, maps and icons. The project, which was lavish with visuals, won an award for excellence under the Graphics: Features and planned coverage category.
Another interactive graphic, Cycling to a car-lite Singapore, also won an award in the same category. The multimedia project pitted three teams against each other to see what happened when they each took a particular mode of transport - cycling, MRT and taxi - to get from Clementi to the central business district.
Mr Pazos, who oversees ST's digital graphics team, said: "Being recognised for our team's efforts at international awards like SND always helps to validate our work and keep us motivated to push ahead with new ideas and visual stories.
"Over the next year, we are looking forward to producing more and experimenting with new technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality too."
Here is the list of awards ST won:
Award of Excellence
Breaking/Daily News: Planned coverage
- 7 reasons the world is watching China's 19th Party Congress
Features: Coverage
Graphics: Features and planned coverage
Experimental Design
- Are you ready for Smart Nation?
Portfolio: Individual
- The Straits Times: Rodolfo Pazos
Portfolio: Organisation
- The Straits Times
Find out more about ST's multimedia projects here.
