The Art Directors Club has announced two winners of its recently relaunched Paul Manship Medal. Inaugural recipients of the honor are Debra Bishop, founding design director of The New York Times for Kids, and Yannis Konstantinidis, director, creative director, and co-founder of NOMINT in London. Presentation of the Paul Manship Medal will be made at the ADC 105th Annual Awards ceremony on Wednesday evening May 13 at Capitale in New York, part of Creative Week 2026.
Initially known as the Manship Medallion, the accolade was the original ADC competition award created in 1920 by celebrated New York City artist Paul Manship (1885-1966), best-known for his monumental gilded sculpture of Prometheus at the heart at Rockefeller Center. The medallion award evolved in the 1960s into today’s iconic ADC Cube.
The Art Directors Club Board of Directors reimagined the honor this year as a new category in the ADC Annual Awards, recognizing advertising or design creative professionals who best act as a catalyst for change, demonstrate foresight and innovation, embody a lasting legacy, and made the most significant contribution in the past several years.
“The Paul Manship medal represents a legacy born from an almost insane ambition,” said Brian Collins, ADC President and co-founder of COLLINS. “When the Art Directors Club was founded those artists understood that in a world that changes with the weather, only the highest level of imagination and craft endures.”
To honor this vision, ADC went to Paul Manship, who created a medallion that captured both the future and past.
“Since 1920, we have asked what excellence looks like,” Collins added. “And we go out every year to find the answer. The Paul Manship medal is more than just another award. It honors those rare leaders who define the highest levels of our craft.
Debra and Yannis have done just that. With éclat.”
“This is an extraordinary honor,” said Debra Bishop. “Hearing the story of Ernest Elmo Calkins and Paul Manship – and the belief that creativity in service of communication could shape culture – makes this recognition feel especially meaningful. That idea is still in the work. It’s still the challenge. To be included in that lineage, and in this community, is deeply humbling.”
“Receiving the Paul Manship Medal, at this moment in our industry’s history, is a profound honour, and I am deeply grateful to ADC for its generosity” said Yannis Konstantinidis.
“The world around us is about to change forever, and the question in front of all of us, individually and as a community, is what kind of work we will make in this new world,” he said. “I believe the answer this Medal points to is the harder of two paths. It is asking us to put unreasonable effort into the things we make. To obsess over problems that seem impossible. To create work that is weird and wild and reckless and unlike anything that has been attempted before. I’m deeply grateful for this honour and for the message it carries.”
Debra Bishop
Deb Bishop is a highly accomplished designer whose award-winning work reflects both creativity and longevity. From her early contributions at Rolling Stone to her work with The New York Times for Kids, her designs have remained thoughtful, engaging, and relevant over time.
The NYT Kids project in particular stands out for its ability to inform and inspire young readers while maintaining a strong visual identity. As founding design director for the project, Bishop helped bring an ambitious idea to life: merging the authority of a newspaper with the wonder and playfulness of a children’s magazine. She wasn’t simply designing pages—she was shaping something that didn’t yet exist.
Beyond her professional achievements, Bishop is a dedicated teacher and mentor. She brings clarity, structure, and intention to her guidance, tailoring her approach to each individual’s strengths and areas for growth. Her lessons build progressively, equipping students with both practical skills and the confidence to solve problems independently.
Yannis Konstantinidis
In an industry increasingly dominated by speed and digital convenience, Yannis Konstantinidis has spent the past five years moving in the opposite direction, proving that outrageous handcrafted projects and radical technical ambition can define the future of advertising.
As a director, creative director, and co-founder of NOMINT, Konstantinidis has championed work that transcends conventional formats, merging stop-motion, 3D printing, pyrotechnics, thermal imagery, and in-camera experimentation to produce films that are visceral, cinematic, and culturally resonant.
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From his ongoing collaboration with WWF for films such as “Up in Smoke” and “In Hot Water” to his recent Winter Olympics campaign “Trails Will Blaze” for the BBC, Konstantinidis amplifies design’s power not only to communicate, but to provoke, move, and endure. Through fearless experimentation and obsessive attention to detail, he continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary craft, shaping a future where technical innovation and handmade impact are inseparable.
