Judges — PANZ Book Design Awards 2020
The judges for the 2020 PANZ Book Design Awards are; Associate Professor in the College of Creative Arts and Director Toi Āria — Design for Public Good Anna Brown (convenor); Aaron McKirdy Design Director at Chrometoaster; writer, reviewer and book buyer for Time Out book store in Auckland Kiran Dass; and book design expert Nick Turzynski of redinc. Book Design.
Convening Judge Anna Brown
Associate Professor Anna Brown is an award-winning book designer, and tertiary design educator and researcher, who works with visual artists, curators, art historians and musicians investigating through form, materials and typography how the vehicle of the book can animate and amplify the content it contains. Her international research profile in book design includes a commission for New Zealand’s official Venice Biennale project in 2013, as well as other national and international commissions. She is interested in collaborative approaches to book design and projects that explore innovative narrative forms resulting in experimental book installations, participatory performance works and artists’ books. Anna is an Associate Professor in the College of Creative Arts where she is Director Toi Āria — Design for Public Good. In the college, she has taught editorial design, typography, and courses about the future of the book. For many years Anna ran her own design business with a specialisation in book design.
Aaron McKirdy
Aaron McKirdy is Design Director at Chrometoaster, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Wellington. He has over 20 years experience designing a broad range of some of New Zealand’s most recognised brands including Auckland Airport, Silver Fern Farms, and Outward Bound. Having cut his teeth creating award-winning publications for arts-based clients, Aaron then honed his branding skills during his time at Designworks. It was his love of typography and books, though, that saw him work alongside some of the UK’s leading authors such as Lauren Child, Neal Layton and Cressida Cowell at Hodder Children’s Books. Aaron has been on the Jury of several design awards and his design work has also received numerous accolades both here and overseas. He received The Purple Pin for Public Good and collected Australia’s Good Design Award supreme prize “Design of the Year” — the only time this has been awarded outside Australia — for the educational game, Game of Awesome.
Kiran Dass
Writer and reviewer Kiran Dass is the buyer for Time Out Bookstore in Auckland and reviews books regularly on RNZ and 95bFM. Her writing has appeared in NZ Listener, NZ Herald, The Spinoff, Pantograph Punch, Sunday magazine, Sunday Star Times, Landfall and The Wire (UK). Dass has chaired sessions at the Auckland Writers Festival, Verb Wellington and WORD Christchurch. She co-hosts the books podcast Papercuts.
Nick Turzynski
Nick Turzynski studied English Literature and Language at Aberdeen University before working in London as a journalist and also in advertising, branding, packaging and magazine design. He moved to New Zealand with his family in 1995 where he worked initially at Cuisine magazine, and then for several years as Art Director at then Hodder Moa Beckett, when publishing upwards of 60 titles a year was not unusual. In 2003 he started his own company, redinc. Book Design, which he still operates and enjoys working with a huge variety of authors and publishers. In 2008 he returned to writing with the publication of his first book, How to Eat a Huhu Grub, illustrated by his son Conrad.
