Toronto weekly The Grid positions itself as a newspaper/magazine, and that hybrid designation stood its ground at this year's Society for News Design (SND) awards, a global competition.The Grid won world's best designed newspaper and also silvers in best overall magazine design, magazine cover story design, and magazine cover story design/features.

"Anyone who saw The Grid's entries came away completely impressed and inspired," said SND executive director Stephen Komives. "It is a publication that embraces editing, smart design and storytelling innovation in ways we're simply not seeing elsewhere."

When asked if SND would be looking to revise its rules in the future to prevent cross-media entries, Komives said it would be up to the awards committee and coordinator and that no moves have been made yet on that front.

"I think if anything we need to consider broadening our entry categories to ensure there is an obvious place for publications like The Grid in as many categories as possible," Komives said. "In our rules, we only use the words 'newspaper' and 'magazine' specifically in a few places. Perhaps these words are becoming obsolete."

The Grid also won as a magazine at last year's NMA awards, along with placing in the world's best designed newspaper category at last year's SNDs. As for which category the weekly would choose if it had to, publisher and editor-in-chief Laas Turnbull said it would be hard to decide. "It's an impossible question. We've been having that debate internally forever." Growing out of the publication's previous incarnation as Eye Weekly, Turnbull said it aimed to combine a newspaper, magazine and coffee table book.