The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2008

The Swiss Federal Office of Culture announced the winners of the «The Most Beautiful Swiss Books» contest for 2008 some days ago. Unfortunately it's just a list without any images I could provide here.

I'm happy to see the book of one of my typography professors at the HGK, Philipp Stamm, which he did with Heidrun Osterer on Adrian Frutiger, listed among the winners. It's titled «Adrian Frutiger. Schriften. Das Gesamtwerk» or «Adrian Frutiger. Typefaces. The Complete Work» in the English version. It's an impressive and weighty tome they worked on for eight years. I read articles on it which referred to it as the most important publication on typography of the last ten years. So, congratulations one more time, Philipp! Who's interested in finding out more about the creation of the book should register for the TYPO Berlin in May where Heidrun and Philipp will talk about it.

I'm really excited to see some pictures of one of the other distinguished books: «Herzog & De Meuron. 1997–2001. The Complete Works, Volume 4» by Gerhard Mack. This book on the world-renowned architects based in Basel was designed by Ludovic Balland. He's a kind of unicum among the graphic designers in Basel and gained a lot of fame thanks to his typographic experiments. He also did the visual identity of the 5th Berlin Biennale in 2008.

Also one of the usual suspects is groendland.basel who already had won awards for publications like «Dramensatz» that really is a beautiful book.

The entire list of winners including designers, studios and publishers like NORM, Elektrosmog, Rollo Press and many more can be downloaded here. The famous «Jan Tschichold Preis» which is annualy awarded within the context of the contest was adjudged to Benjamin Sommerhalder and his publishing company Nieves based in Zurich.