Penguin Judges
Joanna Prior – Managing Director, Penguin General
Joanna has had a guiding hand on Penguin's design for about eight years. In her role as Marketing and Publicity Director of Penguin UK (until July 2009) she helped to position Penguin's books for the market place through their cover design and through some innovative and award-winning marketing campaigns. For the past decade she has also run Penguin's art committee, which is responsible for the growing collection of text-based art that adorns the meeting rooms and corridors of Penguin's offices at 80 Strand. In her current role as Managing Director of Penguin General Books she is responsible for publishing the prize-winners and bestsellers including Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Antony Beevor, William Trevor, Zoe Heller and Marina Lewycka.
Jim Stoddart – Penguin Press Art Director
After graduating in Sheffield, Jim went straight into a job at Bill Smith Studio in London, designing record and CD covers for such labels as EMI, Virgin, BMG, Mute and Trojan Records. Five years later he joined Penguin, where he worked as a cover designer for eighteen months, and then he went to work with Chris Ashworth under Lewis Blackwell at Getty Images for twelve months. In 2001 he returned to Penguin as Art Director of Penguin Press, where he has overseen the redesign and rebranding of Penguin Classics and Penguin Modern Classics, as well as designing and art directing covers for Penguin's Allen Lane hardback imprint, the Particular Books imprint and Penguin non-fiction paperbacks. Jim's team was shortlisted for the Design Museum's Designer of the Year Award in 2005 for the Penguin Great Ideas series.
John Hamilton – Penguin General Art Director
John attended the Glasgow School of Art and Design and specialized in illustration. He then became a junior designer, designing books, and has continued on this path ever since.
John came to Penguin in 1997 as Penguin Art Director and was the driving force behind dropping the orange spines from the majority of Penguin fiction. He was also responsible, along with Jim Stoddart, for Penguin's 70th Birthday Campaign, inviting seventy designers, artists and illustrators to create one cover each, designed within seven days for a flat fee of £70.
John is responsible for art directing Penguin's hardback imprints, Viking, Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Fig Tree and Penguin Ireland.
Guest Judges
Jonny Hannah
Born and bred in Dunfermline, Jonny Hannah studied Illustration at Liverpool Art School and then the Royal College of Art.
Since graduation in 1998 he has been working both as a commercial designer and as an illustrator (his clients include the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times and the St Kilda Courier) and printmaker, creating wonderful screen-printed books, posters and prints for his own Cakes & Ale Press.
Alice Rawsthorn
Alice Rawsthorn is the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. Her weekly Design column – published every Monday – is syndicated to other media worldwide. An influential design commentator, Alice speaks at important international events, including the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She is a trustee of the Arts Council England and the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Design. Her new book, On Design, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in October 2012.
