Judges — PANZ Book Design Awards 2022

The judges for the 2022 PANZ Book Design Awards are; Jenna Todd,  Manager and book buyer at Time Out Bookstore (convenor); editorial designer and writer Jenny Nicholls, artist, designer and academic Johnson Witehira, and William Chen who was founding art director at Metro magazine.

Convening Judge Jenna Todd

Jenna Todd (Kāi Tahu) is the manager and book buyer at Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden, which was named in the top three bookstores in the world in 2017. She is Chair of Booksellers Aotearoa NZ and a member of the New Zealand Book Awards Trust. Jenna was named Young Bookseller of the Year in 2015 and was a fiction judge for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She also reviews books on RNZ’s Nine to Noon and 95bFM’s breakfast show.

Jenny Nicholls

Jenny Nicholls is a freelance editorial designer and writer who reviews books for the New Zealand Listener and writes opinion columns for Stuff. Before training in graphic design, Jenny graduated from Wellington Polytechnic School of Journalism. For many years Jenny was art director for the Bauer NZ current affairs magazines North & South and Metro. She is interested in the interaction between photography, text and typography. She has judged cartoons and graphic art for the NZ Voyager Media Awards, and was a judge for the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Jenny’s magazine covers have won 10 industry awards. She has won the Magazine Publishers Association Awards Designer of the Year award (Current Affairs) twice, and MPA Supreme Designer of the Year.

Johnson Witehira

Johnson Witehira is an artist, designer and academic of Tamahaki and Ngāi Tū-te-auru descent. Since completing his doctorate in Māori Visual Art (2013), Johnson has been on a mission to bring Māori culture into the lives of all New Zealanders. He has led the development and implementation of Māori design for some of New Zealand’s most prominent organisations, including The Auckland City Council, TVNZ, The Auckland International Airport, and Waka Kotahi (The New Zealand Transport Authority). Originally trained as a graphic designer, Johnson is particularly interested in Māori lettering, typography and typeface design.

 

William Chen

William Chen was founding art director at Metro magazine, Warwick Roger’s ground-breaking magazine, which went on to shape the future of magazine publishing in New Zealand. After nearly 19 years at Metro, he turned his hand to designing Cuisine magazine and styling food shoots. He has designed books ever since his Metro days and more recently, he began utilising the insights and skills gleaned from his years of food design, by reviewing and photographing Auckland food, especially the Malaysian dishes that he grew up with. Given his specialist knowledge, he is often called upon to judge Malaysian food. His reviews can be found on his blog and Instagram (wchen).

PANZ employs a strict conflict of interest policy and no judge is permitted to have their book design work entered into the awards. Where a judge has a perceived conflict of interest with a book, publisher or designer they will recuse themselves from judging the relevant category. This process is closely monitored by PANZ.