Information is Beautiful and Kantar announce the opening of the entry period for the 2018 Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards. Submissions for the 2018 awards can be made between 5th June and 7th September. Building on the award categorisation launched last year, a new ‘Breaking News’ category is being introduced to celebrate the incredible data visualisation work happening in news rooms and elsewhere to illuminate breaking news stories.
Founded as a collaboration between KANTAR and renowned writer & designer David McCandless, the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards are now in their seventh year of celebrating the world’s best data visualisations, encouraging creativity at every level from students through to established studios and media brands. For 2018 we’re taking the awards ceremony from London to New York City, where the awards have previously been featured in the Museum of Modern Art. A US$20,000 prize fund will be awarded during the ceremony to data visualisation creators across nine categories plus an overall outstanding individual.
In 2017 entries were submitted from over 100 countries. Gold Award-winning entries tackled everything from the journey of ISIS’ foreign fighters and the Nuclear Threat, to the trajectory of science careers, the unlikely odds of a band making it big, and food search trends on Google. Non-English language winners included South China Morning Post, Berliner Morgen Post and Corriere della Sera. Winners were selected by a diverse panel of around 30 experts from various disciplines including music (Grammy award winning producer Mark Spike Stent); fine art (Nigel Hurst, CEO of the Saatchi Gallery); media (Shaun Savage, VICE) as well as numerous data visualization pioneers and a substantial online public vote from a community of around 300,000 visitors.
Other previous winners include: Spies in the Skies (2016), an exploration of airborne government surveillance in the U.S. by Buzzfeed; Dear Data (2015), hand-drawn dataviz postcards by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, now a best-selling Penguin book; Raw (2014), an influential dataviz software from DensityDesign Research Lab; Bloomberg Billionaires Index (2013), by Bloomberg Visual Data; and CNN Home & Away (2012), a visual tracking recent war casualties by noted dataviz designers Stamen.
Awards founder David McCandless says: “We’re looking forward to bringing the Awards Ceremony to New York, home to so many of our previous winners and many outstanding creators. We’re particularly excited about the new Breaking News prize, which will showcase work created under the tight pressure of a news deadline. What makes the Awards really special is that we offer a level playing field from student through semi-pro right up to big brand level. Indeed 2016’s rising star winner, Nadieh Bremer, clinched the following year’s Outstanding Individual prize. Nurturing such talent is one of the great privileges of being involved in the Awards.”
2018 important dates:
- Entry period opens Tues 5 June 2018
- Entry deadline Fri 7 Sep, 11:59pm PST
- Showcase announced Tues 11 Sep
- Longlist announced Tues 18 Sep
- Shortlist announced & public voting opens Tues 2 Oct
- Voting closes Fri 19 Oct, 11.59pm PST
- Awards Ceremony: last week Nov/first week Dec