Shadowdark wins an Ennie for best LAYOUT?

First off, I haven't closely followed the apparent OSR community contraversy surrounding SD or it's author. Admittedly, I DID buy they game due to many stellar reviews from a lot of the big OSR youtube RPG reviewers. Along with Knave2e. I know that Questing Beast (Ben Milton) is a seasoned v-blogger and he truly has OSR in his blood.

But all that stuff aside, I got both of these books recently, and I have serious doubts about how Shadowdark won a Best Layout award. Its layout is amateur at best. Honestly... just simple 2 column text, with art squeezed in with sharp edges as if done by a 16 year old in an intro to Adobe Pagemaker class.

And the FONTS. Oh god the fonts. They are a mess.

First off, it is clear that they are copied over from Knave. Or perhaps the other way around, but doubtful, as Knave picked a old stylish gothic font for its section titles, and sticks with it throughout the book. It also paired it with a nice times roman ish serif font for the main body text. This shows that the publisher actually has experience in matching fonts and layout with creating a style for the book.

In comparison Shadowdark has a schizophrenic selection of fonts, including a gothic one that is MORE stylized than the one Knave uses (MORE is better right?) but then decides not to stick to it in the actual Chapter headings of the book, where she chooses to go for something with a more pulp horror style. In the beginning pages of the book, there are title spreads with "Shadowdark" a couple pages apart that have totally different style font in exactly the same place. Worse of all, the body text of the book is in some boring Arial or Helvetica sans serif font... completely uninspired, and completely jarring given the stylistic nature and theme of the title and heading font choices. Was Kelsey going for the "mishmash" theme to fit the game? Not sure. But these book should not have won a "BEST OF" award for it, when in direct comparison Knave2e had a much better execution of the same style of design layout.