Text’s Design Director W. H. Chong won the 2013 Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Design Hall of Fame Award at last night’s Australian Publishers Association Book Design Awards.

This award is presented to a designer whose work has made a significant contribution to book design in Australia. The judges said that the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Award ‘is a most fitting and deserving acknowledgement as Chong has been an inspirational designer, teacher, mentor and force within the publishing industry for decades.’

Chong’s design for Murray Bail’s The Voyage also won Best Designed Cover of the Year Award, and shared the Best Designed Literary Fiction Book Award (with Allison Colpys' and Miriam Rosenbloom’s cover for Amy Espeseth’s Sufficient Grace).

Chong has won several APA Book Design Awards in the past, including 2012’s Best Designed Children’s Cover and Best Designed Young Adult Book for Bernard Beckett’s August, and 2011’s Best Designed Cover of the Year and Best Designed Literary Fiction Book for Lloyd Jones' Hand Me Down World.