BostonGlobe.com wins top design award
BostonGlobe.com, the Globe’s subscription website, has been named the “World’s Best Designed’’ site for 2011 by the Society for News Design.
In citing BostonGlobe.com, which launched last year, judges in the society’s annual Best of Digital News Design competition said it “decisively raised the bar for digital news design.’’
“The Globe site is a refreshing shift away from crafting news design as a single artifact and toward news design as an organism that responds to context, to device, and to the user,’’ they said.
The website also received a Judge’s Special Recognition Award for its use of responsive design, which they called “a key moment in media history.’’ Responsive design adapts Web pages for optimum viewing on a variety of devices, from laptops to tablet computers to smartphones.
The website was created by a team led by Globe digital design director Miranda Mulligan who partnered with outside designers and developers from Upstatement and the Filament Group, as well as with local designer-developer Ethan Marcotte.
“We set out to create a clean, elegant website where great storytelling in words, images, graphics, and video was front and center,’’ said Dan Zedek, the Globe’s assistant managing editor of design.
Mulligan said BostonGlobe.com stands out because of its versatility on mobile devices.
“How our stories appear on mobile devices used to be an afterthought - now it’s the first thought,’’ she said. “That’s the strongest thing about the website.’’
The society’s judges came from Chicago, London, Madrid, New York, St. Louis, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. They met earlier this year at Ball State University in Indiana to consider more than 500 digital entries in a variety of categories.
