Today’s Zaman has so far exerted efforts to fulfill its duty by addressing the eye of the reader, always doing its utmost to present everything as a “visual feast.”The content has to be of high quality, but the presentation of this content has to be just as beautiful. That has been the goal of the Today’s Zaman design team. Today’s Zaman’s young design team almost never rests, not even for a second, 365 days a year. They put forward their best efforts to create beautiful and esthetic newspapers that are pleasing for readers to read. What they do is not simply limited to page design. The pages they create are far more than simple designs. Above all, Today’s Zaman’s page designers have managed to become a real team with the editors, understanding the content and essence of each one of the stories published. They then attach more meaning to news stories from their own aesthetic perspective. They design with perfection and complete news articles with the most suitable photographs, graphics and illustrations, and then present the articles mingled with unique designs for you to enjoy as you read.
As always, you were the first to congratulate and appreciate the efforts of the Today’s Zaman design team, which creates works of art every day under a heavy deadline, in the moments before which they combine the modern and the classic, the practical and the artistic. I should note with gratitude that we have numerous readers who have expressed their admiration for our paper’s journalism as well as its design via e-mails and telephone calls or during face-to-face meetings. Undoubtedly, these words of appreciation were not for nothing. As a matter of fact, careful attention, painstaking efforts and selfless labor have permeated every inch of our pages, and these all are deserving of praise. Today’s Zaman’s hard-working design team, whose first award was the appreciation of its readers, has proven -- by winning 21 awards of excellence from the Society for News Design (SND), whose awards are the most prestigious in the world -- that its readers’ appreciation was not without cause.
No, you didn’t read that wrong. With its design performance in its first year, Today’s Zaman entered the league of giants directly at the top. At the 29th annual The Best of Newspaper Design™ Creative Competition, held by the New York-based SND and Syracuse University, Today’s Zaman has crowned its content with its artistic designs by winning 21 awards.
For any newspaper targeting high-quality journalism, the SND awards are very important. Knowing that 14,818 entries were submitted to the competition from 373 daily and non-daily newspapers of 40 countries makes Today’s Zaman’s 21 awards of excellence particularly significant. The jury of the SND, the world’s most prestigious institution in the field of newspaper design, consists of leading newspaper and magazine editors and art directors from around the world along with professors from renowned universities. This means that each award won reflects the evaluation of authorities who meticulously scrutinized the work submitted.
Just like Today’s Zaman, our sister newspaper Zaman has been awarded 21 awards of excellence by the SND, which has thus, with the awards it has given, shown that publications can design news articles, ads and photographs separately but in perfect harmony.
I congratulate with heartfelt sincerity our entire design team, particularly our Art Director Fevzi Yazıcı and Layout Director Şemsi Açıkgöz, for this great success. Also, I hope these 21 awards of excellence Today’s Zaman has won in the first year of its publication life turn out to be an inspiration for Turkish journalism.
