The Marshall Project has been named the “World’s Best Designed Website” by the prestigious Society for News Design (SND), an international organization for news media professionals and visual communicators. The prize, which was shared with the digital business news outlet Quartz, was presented in San Francisco on April 9 to Ivar Vong, The Marshall Project’s director of technology.
In their citation explaining their decision, the SND judges wrote:
[The Marshall Project] has an incredibly strong design language that works in every place it manifests itself — on the web, on mobile, on social, in email newsletters. All in a beautiful design vocabulary that travels easily from place to place.
The newsletter isn’t just well-designed, it’s an excellent example of the kind of publishing that we all should aspire to — brief and useful, with way-pointing to deeper dives if needed. ...The Marshall Project’s special features are among the very best in the industry, and the deft use of illustration and information graphics is superb.
The Marshall Project’s website was designed to evoke the era of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice, and our namesake. In an interview with SND, designer Andy Rossback describes how the fonts and typeface mirror those found on legal documents and stationery from the 1950s and 60s.
Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller commented, “This award is especially satisfying because it honors design not just as art, but as an effective vehicle for delivering serious work. The judges said: ‘The Marshall Project is urgent and respectful, insightful and contextual. This is audience-first design, at its best, and in service of great, important, difficult journalism.’ I'm enormously proud of Gabriel Dance and his team.”
The Marshall Project’s site continues to evolve as new products are added. Most recently we launched The Record, a database of over 14,000 links that curates some of the best criminal justice reporting from around the web.
