2020 Winner
Communication Design

Great Performers

Great Performers

Category—Editorial

2020 Winner
Communication Design

Great Performers

Designer(s)

Rachel Willey, New York

Additional Credits

DESIGN DIRECTOR:
Gail Bichler

ART DIRECTOR:
Matt Willey

DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR:
Ben Grandgenett

PUBLICATION:
The New York Times Magazine

PRINCIPAL TYPE:
Foundation Sans Number 44
Signal Compressed

DIMENSIONS:
8.93 x 10.9 in.
(12.5 x 15.1 cm)

CONCEPT:
Each year, Times critics A. O. Scott and Wesley Morris select the year’s best film actors to be honored in our Great Performers issue. This year, photographer Jack Davison was commissioned to create raw black-and-white portraits of each performer in natural, unadorned light. Using a design inspired by the repetitive and deconstructed movement found in film stills, each actor’s last name was used to create bold typographic headlines that harked back to old Hollywood. The spliced nature of the letterforms lent themselves to dynamic animations on both web and mobile.