Celebrating Alaska’s Best of the Best

The Alaska Business Best of Alaska Business awards are taking place this year July 11, once again on the gorgeous roof-top of 49th State Brewing Co. located in downtown Anchorage. We’re supposed to say we can’t wait to see you (and we can’t—buy tickets now, they are limited) but it’s just as true that we can’t wait for this party ourselves, and it’s hard to pinpoint what we’re looking forward to most: the sun, the views, the incredible drinks, the games, or—of course—the excellent company.

Because this isn’t just a party to have a party (though, you know, we might look into that in the future), we’re celebrating with a very specific goal in mind, and that is recognizing the businesses in Alaska that you—our readers—love. We’re stoked for an opportunity to spend time with our readers, sponsors, and advertisers, all of you who are out there every day building the Alaska business community and giving us something to write about. Businesses large and small participating in massive industries and niche markets are all important pieces of the Alaska economic picture, and we know our readers are the best people to vote on who’s the best in each of their respective fields.

So if you haven’t taken the survey yet, make sure you do. It’s available here: akbizmag.com/2019-best-of-alaska-business-awards.

If you’ve been putting it off, now’s the time to make sure you take a minute, as the survey ends Friday, April 19.

And while that’s the end of the survey, it’s just the beginning for us. After the results are in and the winners have been tabulated, that’s when the editorial team really gets to make the Best of Alaska Business awards special section, published in our July issue, really shine. We’ll be reaching out to every one of our winners and calling in several photographers to show you through words and pictures how your vote really does make a difference to the businesses you support.

But we were working on the magazine even before we posted the survey online: discussions about the cover have been taking place since last year. We love taking this opportunity to highlight the many, extremely talented Alaskan artists and designers in our community by inviting them to design the July cover. These artists and designers are often small business owners themselves, and the work they do improves bottom lines, supports nonprofit missions and goals, and in general makes Alaska a more beautiful place to live.

With that, we are so pleased to announce the designer for our July 2019 cover is Jontue Hollingsworth, founder and owner of Hollingsworth Design Co. (hollingsworthdesign.co). He focuses on clear communication with his clients to provide branch consultation and concept development in addition to his illustration and design services. According to Hollingsworth, his mission is “to be brave, thoughtful, open-minded, and ultimately, make something good.”

We’ve seen what he’s planning, and we’re blown away.

So if you haven’t voted, vote; if you have plans on July 11, cancel them; if you think you have other good reasons not to come, we’re skeptical, because this magazine we’re writing, and this party we’re planning? It’s for you.