Meet Our Judges: Johan Holm, Art Director Me and My Magazines

Johan Holm loves magazines. While attending BrobyGrafiska in Sunne, Sweden, he started an internship at Café magazine, and a blog entitled Me and My Magazine, both in 2008.

Café was a magazine he had subscribed to for ten years with the goal of one day working there; on the blog he wrote about his days at Café and his thoughts about newspapers and magazine covers. What started as mostly text soon evolved into strictly examples of cover designs and continues today.

After graduation he worked as an art director at the fast-paced A Perfect Guide, a weekly magazine distributed through the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet with a circulation of 100,000 copies. He also got to design some of the newspaper’s customer’s magazines which lead to a position at Bonniers Icon magazine in 2012, ending in 2015.

Now he concentrates on art directing custom publications including c/oHops, a magazine devoted to the fantastic world of beer that’s published five times a year in Sweden. Asked about his goals he replied, “My goal is to be able to work on many projects and thus met many new, exciting and inspiring people and hopefuly make emotion-provoking publications together.”

Johan is sole-art director judging the 3x3 Student Show. Each year we invite an art director to help judge the student work we receive from around the globe. He joins a list of distinguished illustrators that make up our jury including André da Loba, Gina Triplett, Michael Byers and Genevieve Gauckler. meandmymagazine.com

3x3 International Illustration Awards No.14 open for entries
Three shows: Professional, Picture Book and Student, open to all illustrators in all countries
Call for Entries poster

Deadline: Midnight, Friday, March 24

Sign-up to receive our Call for Entries and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Meet Our Judges: Melissa Manlove, Chronicle Books

Melissa Manlike loves, loves children’s books. With a background study of the Classics in college it wasn’t the most direct route to editing. But a job at The Storyteller bookstore changed everything. She loved it there so much that she stayed three years. By happenstance one of her customers was an editor at Chronicle Books who told her about the internship program at Chronicle. She applied and six months later was hired as an editorial assistant—that was twelve years ago.

Her acquisitions tend to be all ages in nonfiction. Asked about submissions, she offered that she receives ten manuscripts a week to review, but the overall interest numbers in the thousands each month. Her job keeps her busy but just recently she was a keynote speaker, a breakout session speaker, member of the manuscript critique faculty,and an illustration contest judge for the Los Angeles SCBWI Writers & Illustrators Day. And she still spends a few hours a week at the bookstore.

Asked about the future in children’s books she said, “The demand that created the higher-than-average demand for YA books is over, the number of children will be more evenly spread over all age groups.” What’s missing in children’s books? Scary stories/horror is Melissa’s reply.

She enjoys the process of producing children’s books and strives to involve the author, illustrator, designer and production manager at all levels, a team approach, “I truly want each member to be pleased with the result of our work.” she says. Many an illustrator and author see her as their dream editor. A long way from the days when she and her sister would go camping with their dad and read Shakespeare around the campfire. www.ChronicleBooks.com

Melissa is on our jury for the 3x3 Picture Book Show.

3x3 International Illustration Awards No.14 open for entries
Three shows: Professional, Picture Book and Student, open to all illustrators in all countries
Call for Entries poster

Deadline: Midnight, Friday, March 24

Sign-up to receive our Call for Entries and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Illustrated Magazine on Film Debuts

A mutual love for movies paired with the desire to see more creative editorial expression, spurred these two friends, Gabriel Solomons and Phil Wrigglesworth, to create Beneficial Shock!, inspired by—and dedicated to—unconventional cinematic adventures.

Beneficial Shock! is a new bi-annual magazine for film lovers and design enthusiasts with accompanying screen-based motion features that will champion progressive thinking from contemporary illustrators, graphic designers and photographers. Rather than your standard film magazine full of reviews, celebrity news and press images, Beneficial Shock! aims to use illustration, visual documentation and design.

Each thematic issue will explore a chosen topic looking at its relationship to film in surprising and often unconventional ways.

Support their efforts on Kickstarter, ends in 19 days.

Meet Our Judges: Sam Arthur, Nobrow

Nobrow burst on the scene in late 2008 as the joint creative endeavor of two friends and ex-St Martin’s alumni: Sam Arthur and Alex Spiro.

As an independent publisher Nobrow has built a solid reputation as a purveyor of beautifully produced image-based books working with some of the best international artists, storytellers, and designers around.

As the founders stress, “We have striven both to bring fresh, young talent to wider audiences, as well as to remind the world of the great talents that have been producing stunning work for many years. We have played with concepts, narratives, genres, formats, printing methods, production processes and design in ways that have come to redefine the standards of quality in visual publishing the world over.”

In 2013 Nobrow launched a new imprint, Flying Eye Books, to publish books aimed specifically at children, 3 to 11. They currently publish around 35 new titles per year which are distributed all over the world. Their books include award-winning titles as well as critically acclaimed publications that define the picture book and art-comic genres.

Our judge, Sam Arthur, studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins and went on to direct commercials, music videos and short films before setting up Nobrow. Sam is also co-founder and Director of the East London Comics & Arts Festival (ELCAF) now in its 6th year. Sam sits on the board of directors of the Association of Illustrators an independent professional body representing the interests of illustrators all over the world. www.nobrow.net

3x3 International Illustration Awards No.14 open for entries
Three shows: Professional, Picture Book and Student, open to all illustrators in all countries
Call for Entries poster

Deadline: Midnight, Friday, March 24

Sign-up to receive our Call for Entries and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Christoph Niemann Documentary on Netflix

Just discovered a new series on design, Abstract: The Art of Design, this weekend. Great series of eight designers, architects and the illustrator par-excellence, Christoph Niemann.

A wonderful look inside Christoph’s studio and around Berlin and New York—well-done cinematography and interview. If you saw him at Parson’s last year then you’ll really love this added treat.

The series is the brain-child of Scott Dadich, former design director at Wired. So if you’re a Netflix subscriber check it out.

3x3 International Illustration Awards Show Call for Entries Now Open

We’re now accepting entries in all three of our shows: professional, picture book and student. Our Show Chair, Rod Hunt, is busy wrapping up the last couple of judges for our professional and picture book show which we’ll be announcing shortly.

Here are the judges for the 3x3 ProShow that we’ve lined up so far. Sam Arthur, Founder, Nobrow, United Kingdom; Jonathan Kenyon, Creative Director, Vault49 and illustrators Dieter Braun, Germany and Julia Rothman. We’ll be adding three more art directors to our panel in the next few days.

Our 3x3 Picture Book Show judges include Melissa Manlove, Senior Editor, Chronicle Books; Sophie Striker, Art Director, Hachette Children's Books, United Kingdom and illustrators Orit Bergman, Israel and Andrea D’Aquino. We’ll be adding one additional art director to the panel.

And for our 3x3 Student Show we’re pleased to have Art Director Johan Holm, Me and My Magazines, Sweden and illustrators André da Loba, Portugal; Genevieve Gauckler, France; Michael Byers, Canada and Gina Triplett.

Check out the complete details for this year’s shows here.

3x3 International Illustration Awards Show No.14
Deadline: Friday, March 24

Late Deadline: Friday, March 31 - there will be a late fee surcharge

Illustration by Melinda Beck, United States