As you know if you are a regular reader of this blog, we always recommend knowing the latest trends in design and development of WordPress. And that’s why we already told you all you need to know about Gutenberg (the new WordPress editor) or the 9 best block plugins with which you can create better designs for your pages and posts.
And to reward and give visibility to those who are already working with Gutenberg, Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, held the first edition of the Automattic Design Awards in 2018.
I think you’ll like to know a little more about who the winners and finalists were, including any curiosity related to the prize. So let’s get to it.
The Prize
We wanted to show how design is thriving in the open-source web, from elegant front-end design to robust tools for creativity.
Alexis Lloyd – Automattic Design Award Blog
Prizes are offered to the winner of each of the 3 categories: Best Site, Best Solution, and Best Style. This year in particular the focus was on projects that were prepared and adapted to Gutenberg and on:
- Deep user empathy
- Developer led design
- Outstanding UX
- Attention to the details
- Simplicity
- Breathtaking content
As a prize, Automattic gave each winner a trophy designed by the design studio Nervous System. And it consisted of an intricate, filigree cube where the Automattic logo emerges from a cellular structure on each side. The trophies were printed in 3D using Selective Laser Sintering in white nylon. The structure was developed with Corollaria software.
Inspired by biological systems, Corollaria plays with adaptive patterns that respond to environmental conditions. You can read more about the algorithmic techniques used in this Corollaria blog post. And the following video shows you the process of generating the trophy.
With the prize as in the following image:
The call for proposals was open until November 16, 2018 and the presentation of the winners was made public in the 2018 WordCamp US. The jury of the Automattic Design Awards was a luxury team, made up of professionals with great prestige and recognition:
- Alexis Lloyd, Automattic,
- Rahul Bansal, rtCamp,
- Leah Buley, InVision,
- Simon Cooke, Pragmatic,
- Simon Dickson, Automattic,
- Monique Dubbelman, BOE Media,
- HAjj Flemings, Rebrand Cities,
- Sarah James, 10up,
- Eriko Kawakami, Automattic,
- Kat Holmes, Google,
- Ant Miller, Human Made,
- Khoi Vinh, Adobe,
- Joshua Wold, XWP,
- Cynthia Savard Saucier, Shopify, and
- Jeffrey Zeldman, A List Apart.
Winners and Finalists
Let’s see now who were the winners and finalists in each category.
Nelio Content
I’m so happy about Nelio Content that I will sound like a payed advocate… but here’s why you’ll love it: it works as promised, its auto-scheduling feature is top-notch, Nelio’s value for money is unmatched, and the support team feels like your own.
Panozk
Best Site
In the category of Best Site, awards are given to websites that offer well thought-out, easy to use, and visually appealing experiences. And the winner in the Best Site category was Kit designed by Peter van Grieken.
The jury unanimously considered this website to be the winner: its vivid colors and general appearance are very nice. A team of 2 people made an integration of 7 websites into one without losing sight of what they wanted to get from the audience. The whole site is designed and developed in Gutenberg. I recommend you to take a look at it, as you will surely like it.
There were two finalists in this category:
- Level Level by Taeke Reijenga
Website of a WordPress agency with a clean and neat design. - Moundarren by Diane Collet
A calm design that fits the topic of the site: poetry.
Best Solution
In the category of Best Solution, awards are given to the tools that allow others to create great sites. The winner in the Best Solution category was Rich Tabor’s Block Gallery. I told you about this plugin when I told you about the 9 best WordPress block plugins. The Block Gallery plugin gives you three new blocks exclusive to Gutenberg with which you can create three different ways to view image galleries:
In this category, the two finalists were:
- Atomic Blocks by Mike McAlistera
This plugin was also one of the plugins we talked about in the previous post. It offers you 11 additional blocks to the ones you find in Gutenberg by default like buttons, testimonials, etc. - Create-guten-block by Ahmad Awais
Create-guten-block is a dev-toolkit with zero configuration (#0CJS) to develop Gutenberg blocks in a matter of minutes without having to configure multiple tools and development environments.
Best Style
Finally, in the category of Best Style awards are given to sites that have a strong aesthetic form and at the same time are completely functional. Sites that are accessible, attractive, and fast are rewarded. The winner in the Best Style category was Level Level, by Taeke Reijenga. The same one that had been a finalist in the category of Best Site.
The Level team presented a Gutenberg site with some videos in which they explained how it works. As a company specializing in accessibility, all the tests that were carried out to evaluate this aspect had a maximum score.
In this category, the two finalists were:
- Moundarren by Diane Collet
As in the Best Site category, this French editor, which has been offering Chinese and Japanese poetry to an international audience for more than 30 years, was a finalist in this category due to its accessibility. - Emergence Magazine by Emergence Magazine and Studio Airport
The website was created before Gutenberg was complete but its design serves as an inspiration to explore the potential of different development tools.
Congratulations!
And now all we have to do is congratulate all the prize finalists and winners. We know that all of them showed their enthusiasm with the prize received in the social networks ?.
Featured image by John Maeda on Twitter.
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