About the awarded year

THE COM­PE­TI­TION: 60 YEARS AND 364 TI­TLES

364 pub­li­ca­tions. in­clud­ing 14 Ital­ian, 44 French and three Ro­mansh ti­tles, were sub­mit­ted to this year's 'The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books' com­pe­ti­tion. This by far ex­ceeded last year's 275 en­tries and rep­re­sented a new record for the book de­sign com­pe­ti­tion. A total of 45 books were awarded the title of 'The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books'.

'The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books' com­pe­ti­tion has reached a high stan­dard over the past few years and aims to con­tinue to meet the high­est de­mands in terms of qual­ity. To en­sure that this re­mains pos­si­ble and that a com­pre­hen­sive image of Swiss book de­sign can be con­veyed, from now on books will also be ad­mit­ted to the com­pe­ti­tion where one or more mem­bers of the Jury have par­tic­i­pated in the de­sign, pro­duc­tion or sales (pub­lish­ing house). These ti­tles will be pre­sented to a Spe­cial Jury also se­lected by the Swiss Fed­eral De­part­ment of Home Af­fairs (DHA).

The 17 ti­tles in whose pro­duc­tion one or sev­eral mem­bers of the (Main) Jury par­tic­i­pated were thus sub­mit­ted to the three mem­bers of the Spe­cial Jury for metic­u­lous ex­am­i­na­tion. This meant that the (Main) Jury spent three days scru­ti­n­is­ing and as­sess­ing 347 books. The (Main) Jury awarded the title of 'The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books' to 43 of the 45 prizewin­ning books, with the re­main­ing two pub­li­ca­tions being se­lected by the Spe­cial Jury.

Under Chair­man François Rappo, Lau­sanne, both the seven-mem­ber Jury and the Spe­cial Jury are com­posed of com­pe­tent spe­cial­ists from var­i­ous book de­sign dis­ci­plines. De­sign cri­te­ria, such as idea and con­cep­tion, are de­ci­sive in the as­sess­ment of the works, fol­lowed by ty­pog­ra­phy, qual­ity of print and bind­ing, ma­te­ri­als used and over­all im­pres­sion.

This year, the Jury also awarded the Jan Tschi­chold Prize, with which the DHA ho­n­ours cre­ative and ex­cep­tional com­mit­ment in the field of book de­sign. The prize money of 15.000 Swiss francs went to the al­ready ex­tremely well-known book de­signer and font de­signer Jost Hochuli, St. Gallen, and thus ho­n­ours a man who has char­ac­terised Swiss book de­sign, not only as a de­signer and pub­lisher, but also through his com­mit­ted teach­ing.

In ad­di­tion. the mem­bers of the Jury also se­lected a 'Book of the Jury'. This is the Hanspeter Hof­mann, Su­per­crit­i­cal Flu­ids ex­hi­bi­tion cat­a­logue, which was de­vised and im­ple­mented by Elek­tros­mog (Valentin Hin­der­mann and Marco Walser), Zurich.

'The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books' com­pe­ti­tion, which is run by the Art and De­sign Sec­tion of the Swiss Fed­eral Of­fice of Cul­ture on be­half of the DHA, cel­e­brates its 60th an­niver­sary this year. A spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion will be held on this ac­count in au­tumn 2004, which will pre­sent a his­tor­i­cal re­view of all as­pects of the com­pe­ti­tion.

This pub­li­ca­tion has been printed on the oc­ca­sion of the two ex­hi­bi­tions in the Mu­seum für Gestal­tung in Zurich and the mudac in Lau­sanne, where all 45 award­win­ning books can be seen.

Mirjam Fischer, Swiss Federal Office of Culture

Jury

FRANCOIS RAPPO, 1955, président du jury, Lausanne
Graphic designer and typographer, fictive in the fields of book and type design, corporate and exhibition design as well as orientation and information systems. Since 1996 Head of the Department of Visual Communication at the ECAL in Lausanne. Member of the Swiss Federal Design Commission.

JULIA BORN, 1975, Amsterdam (NL) und Zürich
Trained in graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, active as a freelance graphic designer in Amsterdam and Zurich, mainly in the cultural domain. Teaching activities at the ECAL in Lausanne and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

PATRICK FREY, 1951, Zürich
Studies in economics and art history. Art historian, exhibition organizer and publisher of art books. Writes and publishes in the field of contemporary art and artists, photography and the phenomena of everyday culture. Since 1983/84 active in cabaret and the theatre as well as projects for radio and television.

JEAN GENOUD, 1926, Lausanne
Typesetter and typographer. Managing Director of Imprimerie Jean Genoud SA in Lausanne, which enjoys a considerable national and international reputation. The company prints high-quality art books, catalogues and annual reports.

HANS-JÜRG HUNZIKER, 1938, Paris (F)
Trained as a typesetter, worked at Mergenthaler Linotype in New York, then with Adrian Frutiger in Paris. Since 1976 active as a freelance typographer. Type instruction at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich and director of studies at the Atelier national de créatian typographique in Nancy.

KAREL MARTENS, 1939, Arnhem (NL)
Since 1961 active as visual designer in the fields of book art and typography for a wide variety of clients. Teaching activity at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. In 1996 awarded the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art. Founder of Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem.

SUSANNA STAMMBACH, 1957, Basel
Trained as a typesetter and typographical designer. Teaches at institutes including the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Zürich and Lucerne as well as the Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano. Since 1991 has worked in her own studio in Basel.

About the awarded year

François Rappo, Lausanne, Chair of the Jury

With 364 en­tries in this, its 60th an­niver­sary year, ‘The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books’ 2003 com­peti­ton proves how well it is able to re­spond to cur­rent trends in book de­sign in Switzer­land through the var­i­ous for­mu­las it has ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing its ex­is­tence. The num­ber and qual­ity of the en­tries mean that the com­pe­ti­tion still rep­re­sents a forum and plat­form of the world of books in Switzer­land today.

This 60th an­niver­sary year will form the sub­ject of an ex­hi­bi­tion and ret­ro­spec­tive pub­li­ca­tion on book art in Switzer­land con­tain­ing each year’s se­lec­tion of prizewin­ning books. The aim here is not to 're­ward the award­win­ners’, but rather to at­tempt to re­veal the ‘key’ im­ple­men­ta­tions of the var­i­ous Swiss book art cul­tures that have been re­vealed in the com­pe­ti­tion since 1943.

This an­niver­sary oc­ca­sion in it­self rep­re­sents an in­vi­ta­tion to put the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in per­spec­tive. How­ever, at the same time , I be­lieve that a par­al­lel needs to be drawn to a - pos­si­bly sub­jec­tive - im­pres­sion, which emerges from the 2003 se­lec­tion. This is the im­pres­sion that, in the con­text of this year's com­pe­ti­tion, the tra­di­tional and con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ics of book de­sign tend to be closely akin to each other. This ap­plies in par­tic­u­lar to this year’s prizewin­ning se­lec­tion, which is char­ac­terised by a rel­a­tively strong pres­ence of text­books and read­ers. Whereas in pre­vi­ous years, print­ing processes, as well as fin­ish­ing and bind­ing tech­niques, were noted for the pos­si­bil­i­ties they offer book de­sign­ers, ty­po­graph­i­cal is­sues tend to dom­i­nate in the 2003 en­tries. Should this be seen as the hall­mark of a year with an eco­nomic cli­mate con­ducive to mak­ing more prag­matic choices ? Or is this a more last­ing ten­dency? The se­lec­tion of award­win­ning books of­fers a fairly open rep­re­sen­ta­tion of cur­rent ty­po­graph­i­cal ten­den­cies, namely those that draw on his­tor­i­cal mod­els (and these in­clude some beau­ti­ful im­ple­men­ta­tions), those that fol­low mod­ernistic mod­els and those that seem to be seek­ing the for­mula of a new ‘new sim­plic­ity’. They all ap­pear to share a closer and more wide­spread in­ter­est in ques­tions re­lat­ing to 'text de­sign'. Ty­po­graph­i­cal trans­parency seems to have once again be­come a vi­sual cri­te­rion this year.

In tech­ni­cal terms, ty­pog­ra­phy -like the im­age- has ben­e­fited from marked progress in terms of high-res­o­lu­tion pre-press and from progress in terms of print­ing. This has reached a level where one could al­most ask fur­ther ques­tions about a para­dox­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion, namely whether our pages are not too smooth, too sleek for the text and for read­ing, fire our char­ac­ters not too per­fect and too sta­ble so as not to tire the reader's eyes? These are rather im­per­ti­nent, even lux­u­ri­ous, ques­tions that pay trib­ute to the high qual­ity of the printed page.

Whilst on th e sub­ject of ty­pog­ra­phy, I would like to ask an­other ques­tion, namely why we don't see more books using new ty­po­graph­i­cal im­ple­men­ta­tions. What stage is the cre­ation of ty­po­graph­i­cal char­ac­ters at in Switzer­land ? Where, then, are the pro­duc­tions of the new gen­er­a­tion?

This ques­tion goes slightly be­yond the scope of the com­pe­ti­tion, but I be­lieve that it de­serves to be asked here with ref­er­ence to the ex­tremely high qual­ity of the graph­ics chain. This qual­ity is often touched upon for im­ages, but is also note­wor­thy with re­gard to words.

This new in­ter­est in the cre­ation of ty­po­graph­i­cal text char­ac­ters could be the ex­pected and hoped-for ex­ten­sion of the quest for sim­plic­ity, which can be seen both in the pro­duc­tions of the youngest gen­er­a­tions and in those of the ma­jor­ity of the prizewin­ning de­sign­ers of this year’s se­lec­tion of ‘The most beau­ti­ful Swiss books’.