Bangor Daily News’ director of graphics and design, Eric Zelz, and Jonathan Ferland, designer, have been recognized with Awards of Excellence by the 26th annual Society for News Design “The Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition.” Their winning entry, “Voter Results: How Maine Voted,” was a full-page informational graphic that ran Nov. 4, 2004. It displayed town-by-town results of the major ballot questions facing Maine voters in last year’s election.

Employing ArcGIS software and working with Kate King of the Maine Office of GIS, Zelz and Ferland were able to provide readers with a graphic representation of voting patterns in Maine, employing vote data gathered by the newspaper’s news and computer services departments.

A total of 190 newspapers from 29 countries won awards, with 1,074 winners chosen from 15,020 entries. Winners will be honored by the Society in Houston this fall. There will also be a book produced of the winning entries.

Zelz joined the paper in 1984, Ferland in 2001.