CC Magazine wins CASE Best of District Award for cover design

CC Magazine, Connecticut College’s flagship publication, has won a Best of District I Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in the design category for “mRNA,” the cover of the Winter 2021 issue.

The issue was published in February of 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic and before vaccines were widely available to the public. The cover story details the work of Kristen Park Hopson ’01, who spent nearly four years at Moderna and is now working to further revolutionize mRNA drug discovery and development.

“We needed a cover image that relayed the gravitas of the story, so we selected one from several options that relayed the power—and hope—of a single vaccination dose in a simple, elegant color scheme,” said Director of Creative Services and CC Magazine Art Director Benjamin Parent. 

The Best of CASE District Awards honor those whose impact at their institutions and passion for their work exemplify the best of the advancement profession in their district or region. District I includes all member institutions in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, as well as the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. 

This is the sixth CASE award for CC Magazine in five years. In 2021, “This Hard Land,” a Winter 2020 CC Magazine article, was honored with the CASE Circle of Excellence Grand Gold Award in the feature writing category. In 2020, CC Magazine was awarded bronze in the Circle of Excellence design category for the cover of the Winter 2019 issue, “Lost In My Life.” In 2018, CC Magazine was recognized with three CASE Circle of Excellence awards: a silver in the magazine publishing improvement category for its 2016 redesign; a gold in the design category for the cover of the Summer 2017 issue, “Birth of the Cool,” and a silver in the design category for the Winter 2017 cover, “The Dance.”