On the initiative of the lighting company Zumtobel Group, architectural photographer Iwan Baan and architect Francis Kéré set out to capture how the sun’s natural light cycle shapes vernacular architecture in Burkina Faso. Iwan Baan’s pictures are accompanied by architectural sketches from Francis Kéré, who grew up in this light environment and whose architecture is inspired by it.

The book traces the history of Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild’s famous art collection. It not only provides the latest research findings on the provenance of 132 objects from the original collection, but it is also the first to contain a large number of historical photographs depicting most of the 1,500 items in the collection. The format, paper, layout, and typeface reference encyclopedias of the last century with modern means. The 132 objects of the accompanying exhibition are presented as cut-outs—overprinted with a rectangle of transparent, glossy lacquer. This additional layer underlines the value of the objects and represents today’s view of their history.

The book presents a series of interviews with 12 protagonists of the book industry. Since the role of design in relation to the future of the printed book was not represented by any of the interviewees, the idea was to address this through the design of the book. As a “blue block,” it addresses the perception of a book as an object and questions the role of design through the mere appearance of itself.

The chairs in this private collection are not an assembly of objects of everyday use. They are a congregation of creatures often eluding their primary purpose as seating. Metaphorically exaggerated height and disassociation transform the chairs into individuals, or sculptures exploring the uncertain boundaries of physics. The book’s generous layout allows readers to immerse themselves in this cabinet of curiosities and give their imagination free rein. Nicolas Polli and Jean Vincent Simonet use their photographic essays to interpret the exhibits originating from well-known artists and designers. The texts illustrate the collection in terms of the friction between art and design.

The work of Marshall Brown demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. The book features some forty collages, including a large foldout of one of his latest works. The book comes with three different covers, each featuring a work from Marshall Brown’s central collage series. The individually shaped title plates, which are glued in blind-embossed shapes, refer to collage as technique and medium.

After thirteen years of collaboration, Michael Riedel draws a line under his work with his New York gallery and publishes their email correspondence—whose ultimate intention was to sell works of art—in the form of banknotes. Abstract recapitulates the many years of correspondence by interweaving excerpts of the emails with a narrative layer—which is also visually comprehensible through different fonts. Text chapters alternate with image sections showing banknote bundles. Large-scale silver embossings transform each of the pages into a new banknote. Flipping pages resembles counting money.

Taking the collections as waymarks, Akris – A Century in Fashion encompasses the house’s hundred-year history: its humble beginnings as an apron atelier, its ascent into the world of high fashion and its rootedness in St. Gallen, center of a once booming Swiss textile industry. Contributions from different authors, among them fashion writer Jessica Iredale, explore the history, uniqueness and forward-looking nature of the house. Photo essays by Iwan Baan illustrate its hometown and inside world. Choreographer John Neumeier and artist Thomas Ruff discuss their creative collaborations with the designer.

Celebrating 25 years in the biz we knew we wanted to do something positive, optimistic and humorous with a nice chance for error so we decided on a Risograph printed manifesto ..type thing! We wanted to explore the unpredictability of it, the mishaps and offsets, tweaking the artwork to encourage this even more, making each book unique and special. Some of the initial sheets had the wrong pages overprinted creating a wonderful set of misprints with a juxtaposition of elements all out of context yet perfectly pleasing to the eye, as we say in the manifesto – embrace the happy accidents. We’re grateful to be doing this for a living and we wanted this artefact to hint at the joy in what we do.

To explore the complexity of “peace,” I visualized Security Council resolutions by rearranging and reordering a decade’s worth. The deconstruction combined with minimal design challenge readers. The result is a small, thick, and heavy book that embodies the Sisyphean task of achieving lasting peace.

I used the typeface Univers by Adrian Frutiger, a Swiss designer whose home country has a longstanding reputation for neutrality in matters of war and peace. To represents the official character of messages, I used Monospasz by thr German Jan Gerner. The book is printed on Crane’s Crest from the USA, which is the official paper for dollar bills.

Memories are based on the objects around us and the connections we have with them, which go beyond their color and shape. Documenting is a form of preservation, and what is preserved tells a story. They are the traces of an existence.
But what happens when these memories of a loved one fade? The project “August” attempts to remember my grandfather by presenting the traces of his life in a documentary book, both through narratives and photographic images of personal objects. This project tries to sensitize readers to socially relevant topics such as aging, generations and fear. The presented photographs and interviews are visualized and represented by memories of the past.

Vilém Flusser divides the cultural history of mankind into five stages. The first stage introduces the person who is in direct contact with nature in a four-dimensional world. The second stage sees the invention of tools. The transition to the third stage marks the discovery of the surface. Tools are used for image production. The fourth stage testifies to a steadily increasing degree of abstraction. Mankind begins to write. This development reaches its climax in the fifth, zero-dimensional stage. There we only encounter the so-called techno-images, which are generated by machines. According to Flusser, the writing of history ends with the fifth stage. I have turned each stage into a book.

The catalogue accompanied the exhibition «Im Zweifel für den Zweifel» (In Doubt for Doubt) at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf.
We conceived it as some kind of conspiracy bible – small format, tight typography, thin paper with high bulk, red instead of gold edges, embossing on leather-like cover.
The catalogue received the prize for »Young Book Design« by Stiftung Buchkunst in 2019 and was shortlisted at Walter-Tiemann-Preis in 2020.

Wunderbook is a visual research and an editorial planning journey which involved the students from School of Design in the Politecnico di Milano. The students met and interviewed people with perceptual problems and delved deeply into the altered spacial vision they are immersed into. The workshop is focused on the theme of misperception as a planning incentive for an inclusive design with social impact, it has been carried out within a laboratory of Communication Design. All the work of visual research led to the production of an object book where to explore different visual languages, analogic and tactile predominantly.

Makét 02: From Here On Out, featuring works by Binh Dang, Nguyen Duy Tuan, Nguyen Dinh Phong and Thi My Lien Nguyen, and an essay by Nguyen Phuong Thao.

Makét 02 (Vietnamese pronunciation of Maquette) has materialized from a very loose pitch. Our initial idea, which now seems naive and straightforward in hindsight, is to bring together several bodies of photography work we love into a book. While created in different contexts, they all carry distinct individual visions and offer more questions than answers. An ensemble of various modes of documentary, so to speak.
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Produced by Matca, co-published with The Gioi Publishing House
Designed by Nguyen Duy Quang – Studio Cạp Cạp

An experimental book project in which the panels of the comic “Black Hole” by Charles Burns were cutted out, so that only the structure of the page layout remains. The content is thus unknown, but the dramaturgy of the story becomes apparent through the shapes and arrangements of the panels. At the beginning, clear lines and symmetry determine the structure, and as the tension builds, the cut edges become wilder and more disordered.

This brochure was designed based on the history of this particular theatre: El Picadero.
A theatre that was set on fire by the military forces during dictatorship in Argentina.
A theatre that was revived by its people, and which represents them. Their strength, their union and their resistance in a time where this was forbidden.
El picadero is all of us; its identity is a collective construction.

Each writing system has different advantages and disadvantages and also quite different approaches. The philosopher and Japanologist Florian Coulmas deals with questions about writing. Based on selected seven central questions, the book Endogen Type Studies approaches type in three different ways. For instance, the first question in the book is: Is good type for the reader also good type for the writer? Each question is viewed from a historical, a philosophical, and a design perspective. A wide variety of experiments support the approaches to the different questions.

A book-object based on the story “the wedding” by Silvina Ocampo.
In this story, not everything is as naive as it looks like. What starts as a sweet and pure relation between family and friends, ends up in envy, treason and death.

Letters and music notes are symbols that represent sounds. Just as music notes are arranged to create melodies, letters are arranged to create meaning. The rhythm and flow of letters in a word can create a certain mood or tone, much like the tempo and rhythm of music can evoke different emotions. Letters and music notes also have specific rules and structures that must be followed to create something coherent and understandable. Both forms of communication have the power to move and inspire people, making them a vital aspect of human expression. So why not combining these two worlds, which seems to be sometimes so separate to each other?

„Amazing jellyfish“ is part of a book series, where in each book a different marine animal is presented. It is not a classic children’s book, because the illustrations are in black and white in combination with one significant highlight color for each animal – in this case cyan. The focus is on details and hidden objects, which are playful to discover in between corals and fish swarms. The book not only addresses the jellyfish themselves, but also playfully explores topics such as microplastics, bionics, and even the origin of the universe. The latter is also taken up again in the illustrations as an allusion to the fact that we know less about the deep sea than about the moon.

A visual representation of the European Research Council’s Political Apologies Across Cultures dataset. Do notions of collective moral responsibility differ across cultures? Or is there a similar understanding about the function and meaning of political apologies for human rights violations? The thin and light grey paper that has roughened edges reminds of newspaper. It has a glue binding and a Swiss brochure. The design of the book picks up the seriousness and subtleties of political diplomacy.

Te Pae is the new convention centre of Christchurch, New Zealand, built after the earthquakes of 2010/11. The book’s narrative is a rite of passage, unfolding the collective transformation from rubble to urban beauty. It seeks to delight and transport the reader to Te Pae; a landmark embodying the island’s stunning natural beauty and diverse cultural values. To capture this, the book is designed with an emphasis on materiality. Through its various paper weights, textures & finishes, it reflects the diversity of materials and craftsmanship of Te Pae. Its fluid layout is an interplay among vivid, full bleed colour photography, small monochromatic page insets, serif typography and tactility.

The challenge of Allerhand (all sorts / a little bit of everything), was to create a new and attractive collection of paperback classroom books for teenagers. The collection is based on colored and perforated covers that allow intriguing inside / out dialogues, while leaving a total freedom to the designer when choosing the title character. The body text typefaces, have a contemporary aspect, great readability, but also specific aspects related to dyslexia. The low-weight, bulky (2.0) paper and soft cover make the book lightweight for schoolbags.