Journalism students have been honoured for their design skills by a national football magazine’s deputy editor.

De Montfort University, Leicester, has awarded the annual prize for the best magazine cover created by students on its journalism degree.

This year’s prize went to Escape, an “elegant health and lifestyle mag” designed by Izzi Rix, Matthew Childs and Abbie Wilkinson as part of the final year of their degree.

This year’s award was judged by Joe Brewin, deputy editor of FourFourTwo and a native of Leicester.

The winning ‘Escape’ design

Praising the winning entry, Joe said: “I immediately know what I’m getting with it: the ‘health, style, culture, society’ line leaves you with no doubt about the kind of stories you’re going to be reading about, and they’ve managed to cleverly cram some 14 cover lines on there without it looking cramped.

“Chances are, anyone could pick that up off the shelf and be drawn to at least one story they’d be interested in reading. So it’s functional.

“But then there’s the newsstand appeal: each one of the mags up for judging did a good job of including a striking image on there (particularly MMXX, which I enjoyed), but I liked the cleanliness of Escape as a full package – it’d definitely stand out in a sea of other titles at Smiths, for example, which is so important.”

Escape editor Izzi said: “I’m delighted Escape won the cover prize. We really thought about every aspect of what makes a great cover and essentially designed what we would love to see on a newsstand.

“Liv created an illustration that perfectly encapsulates the magazine’s essence and we can’t thank her enough.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to have our time and effort acknowledged. Thank you.”