Each year in the Creative Review Annual we choose a Design Studio of the Year. Our winner this time is an in-house studio which has consistently delivered powerful, original work that has revived a sector of the media industry

There’s some brilliant design work in this year’s Annual, as you might expect. Spin has several outstanding projects in our pages, while it’s great to see Brazil, Canada, Australia, the US and mainland Europe represented.

But we have chosen to recognise an in-house design team which has had an enormous impact on its industry. Under creative director Richard Turley, (not forgetting editor Josh Tyrangiel) Bloomberg Businessweek has trounced its rivals with a verve and energy that recalls the heyday of the printed magazine.

Set-piece editions in which the decks are cleared for total devotion to one topic have become a speciality of the magazine – its valedictory Steve Jobs issue being particularly successful. In our June 2012 issue our columnist Jeremy Leslie revealed the working process of the Bloomberg Businessweek team as it put together the issue (images above, you can read his piece here).

Last November, the team did it again with its Election Issue, shown here and chosen as one of our Best in Book winners for The Annual.

The Election issue takes as its starting point a famous speech by Ronald Reagan in which he asked the American people whether they felt better or worse off than they had been four years ago and applies that test to Obama’s period in office.

It opens with a double-page, black and white shot of the President’s inauguration on January 29, 2009 overlaid with facts about the state of the nation at that point.

From there, using the full range of modern visual storytelling weaponry, it takes a long hard look at what has happened to the US since. The cost of living, the changing nature of employment, financial, security and housing issues are all investigated with enormous verve and invention.

This is a tour-de-force of brilliant, visually-led storytelling. It is magazine publishing at its best, flexing every muscle of the editorial process to deliver a depth and quality of content unmatched elsewhere in the news weekly sector.

But it’s not just in these special editions that Bloomberg Businessweek delivers. It consistently produces powerful covers and features which offer a compelling case for the future of print media and the vital role that design has to play in that. Congratulations to creative director Richard Turley and all his team. With its combination of editorial and visual punch, Bloomberg Businessweek has, for the moment, given a sector of the media industry new hope.

Election Issue design team: Creative Director: Richard Turley. Design Director: Cynthia Hoffman. Art Director: Robert Vargas. Graphics Director: Jennifer Daniel. Director of Photography: David Carthas. Deputy Photo Editor: Emily Keegin. Designers: Shawn Hasto, Chandra Illick, Tracy Ma, Maayan Pearl, Lee Wilson. Graphics: Evan Applegate, Christopher Nosenzo. Photo Editors: Alis Atwell, Donna Cohen, Jamie Goldenberg, Diana Suryakusuma, Jane, Yeomans, Meagan Ziegler-Haynes. Art Manager: Emily Anton

The Creative Review Annual is published in association with iStockphoto.

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