‘Who’s Afraid of the Light?’ wins ABDA book of the year
The winners for the 2024 Australian Book Design Awards, presented by the Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA), have been announced.
The winners in each category are:
Book of the year
- Who’s Afraid of the Light? (Anna McGregor, Scribble), designed by Anna McGregor
Cover of the year
- Lola in the Mirror (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate), designed by Darren Holt
Best designed commercial fiction cover
- Lola in the Mirror (Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate), designed by Darren Holt
Best designed literary fiction/poetry cover
- The Furphy Anthology 2023 (Hardie Grant), designed by Design by Committee
Best designed nonfiction cover
- ’Twas a Dark and Stormy Gurgle (John Marsden, self-published), designed by Design by Committee
Best designed series cover
- The Crikey Read (Hardie Grant), designed by Design by Committee
Best designed fully illustrated book under $75
- Earth & Fire (Kylie Johnson & Tiffany Johnson, T&H), designed by Ashlea O’Neil
Best designed fully illustrated book over $75
- 1001 Remarkable Objects (Rhyan Clapham et al., Powerhouse), designed by Karen Hancock
Best designed cookbook
- Fish Butchery: Mastering the catch, cut and craft (Josh Niland, Hardie Grant), designed by Daniel New
Best designed children’s picture book
- Who’s Afraid of the Light? (Anna McGregor, Scribble), designed by Anna McGregor
Best designed children’s nonfiction book
- Ultrawild (Steve Mushin, A&U), designed by Sandra Nobes and Steve Mushin
Best designed junior fiction book
- Cat on the Run (Aaron Blabey, Scholastic), designed by Nicole Stofberg
Best designed children’s/young adult series cover
- Roobee Roo (Nico & Candy Robertson, Hachette), designed by Nico and Candy Robinson
Best designed children’s/young adult cover
- It’s the Sound of the Thing (Maxine Beneba Clarke, HGCP), designed by Pooja Desai
Best designed small-run book
- Every Car That I Have Driven (Bobby Ly, Picolitre), designed by Hope Lumsden-Barry
Best designed student cover
- Shine (RMIT), designed by Sum Tsui
Best designed student book
- Amplifying Voices in Frankenstein (University of Technology Sydney), designed by Rachel Zhu
Best designed student series
- Speculative Fiction (University of Technology Sydney), designed by Tehya McEvoy
2024 designers’ choice award
- Rumi: Food of Middle Eastern appearance (Joseph Abboud, Murdoch Books), designed by George Saad
ABDA hall of fame award
- Jenny Grigg
Deb Brash emerging designer of the year
- Susan Le.
Pictured L–R: Designers Jenny Grigg, Sandy Cull and Susan Le.
Hall of fame inductee Jenny Grigg is a designer at Giramondo and lecturer in the School of Design at RMIT. She has worked as art director at Rolling Stone magazine, senior designer at Pentagram, and creative director of HarperCollins. She was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame in 2020.
In a speech about Grigg, designer Sandy Cull said: ‘As a fellow designer, I am consistently awed by the intelligence and the innovation of her work. Every cover, every series design, indeed every beautifully considered and articulated contribution raises the profile and the standards in our industry. Her innovative, minimal style lifts the benchmark, and without exception, challenges a more prosaic approach to designing a book, lighting the way for all of us, her peers and her students.’
For the 72nd year, the awards celebrate the ‘best and brightest, most original and beautiful designs of the past year’. Selected from shortlists announced in March, the winners were announced at an awards ceremony on 24 May at Craft & Co in Melbourne.
The winners in all categories can be viewed via the ABDA website.
Pictured above: Anna McGregor.
Category: Awards Local news
