Award for Editorial Design (Tie)

Award Sponsor: Issues Magazine Shop

Winner (Tie): Madina Amanzai

Winning Project: be:longing

Award Sponsor: Issues Magazine Shop; School: George Brown Polytechnic, Toronto, ON; Educator Support: Kristine Do and Raj Grainger

be:longing explores nostalgia as a tool for connection rather than escapism, examining a feeling that can bring comfort to some and difficulty to others through the science and psychology behind it, its sensory cues, the pull between past and future, anemoia and personal stories. Blur and texture run through the imagery and typography to capture nostalgia's dreamlike quality, with a modern serif paired with an elegant script accent and a monospace typeface blending classic and contemporary registers, while a warm, vibrant palette softened by muted brown and cream and generous white space evoke the unhurried feeling of flipping through a photo album. The book's second half turns to anemoia — nostalgia for a time never directly experienced — shifting into a hazier, more experimental register through a black, white and grey palette punctuated by a pop of yellow, evoking a flash of memory, and typography that is deliberately blurred and shifted out of alignment. The project is intended for anyone who experiences nostalgia, longs for the past, feels lost or needs emotional clarity, offering creative-minded adults a space to reconnect.

Winner (Tie): Mayara Sampaio

Winning Project: IGNITE

Award Sponsor: Issues Magazine Shop; School: George Brown Polytechnic, Toronto, ON; Educator Support: Paul Haslip, Ana Rita Morais and Carl Shura

IGNITE is a decolonial exploration of imposter syndrome within Latin American identity, unpacked across a magazine, a companion booklet and a poster series that together make an invisible experience visible. The magazine traces how imposter syndrome connects to colonial history and collective memory, with each edition centred on a Latin American thinker — the inaugural issue features Brazilian writer and philosopher Lélia Gonzalez and her analyses of Latinidad and Blackness — while the booklet moves from diagnosis toward action and the poster series reasserts a value beyond what readers have been taught. Newspaper stock recalls eras when print shaped public opinion, two serif typefaces balance classic press conventions with a modern tone and black-and-white halftone imagery, focused on the eyes and drawn from stock photography of Brazil and Colombia alongside the designer's own family photographs, evokes an identity that reads clearly from a distance but blurs up close. A palette drawn from Latin American flags — green, red, blue and yellow, with orange added for cohesion — carries through to a matchbox-style package, extending the project's central metaphor of burning the system down to rebuild something new. The intended audience is Latino students in colleges and universities and the broader Latino community, offering a space to spark dialogue, challenge structural narratives and reclaim self-worth.

Honourable Mentions

Judges