Judges at the recently judged Society for News Design's 2005 Creative Competition awarded six Gold awards, NewsDesigner.com has learned. SND defines a Gold as an "award granted for work that defines the state of the art. Such an entry should stretch all limits of creativity. It should be impossible to find anything deficient in a gold-winning entry. It should be as perfect as humanly possible. Very few of these awards are given. Judges were asked to be very selective and look for total perfection in awarding a Gold Medal for the category entered."

Gold award winners are:

Die Zeit
Special Coverage/Sections/Multiple Sections with Advertising (Category 10Bb)
Leben sections on parenthood
(more images after the jump)

San Jose Mercury News
Special News Topics/The Athens Olympics (5A)
(more images after the jump)

Indigena
Feature Design/Entertainment Page (7Cc)
John Holmes page
(best image available; the hands are not part of the page, but the person holding the page; a full, more amusing version of that image here)

Cleveland Plain Dealer
Special section cover (10Ca)
ABCs of investing

Los Angeles Times Magazine
Portrait Photography (17E)
A life in the balance portrait

The Globe and Mail
Use of Photography (17L)

More images after the jump and tk, I hope.

San Jose Mercury News

Die Zeit