The 19 Most Beautiful Swiss Books of 2012

Bern, 12.03.2013 - On behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, a five-member jury awarded 19 books for the year 2012. The competition The Most Beautiful Swiss Books exists since 1943, and is coordinated by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture since 1999. The jury received a record 454 submissions into the competition this year. The Jan Tschichold Award, which honours excellence in the field of book design, goes to the typographer, type and graphic designer François Rappo from Lausanne.

The Swiss Federal Office of Culture organizes the competition ‘The Most Beautiful Swiss Books’ on an annual basis. It thereby recognizes excellence in the field of book design and production, as well drawing attention to remarkable and contemporary books by Swiss designers, printers and publishers.

For the first time in the history of this competition, over 450 books were submitted to the competition. While the number of submitted books was relatively stable at around 400 books per year, this year’s numbers bear witness to the fact that designers, printers and publishers are keen to submit their work to an expert jury. The independent, five-member jury presided by Manuel Krebs, considered all entries and selected 19 books as the most beautiful Swiss books of 2012.

Jan Tschichold Award 2013: François Rappo
Each year the jury bestows, independently of the books submitted for the competition, the Jan Tschichold Award in memory of the typographer Jan Tschichold, on whose initiative the Swiss book design competition was conceived in 1944. The Federal Department of Home Affairs entrusted the jury 1997 with the task of annually awarding this honour to an individual, a group or an institution for outstanding book design achievement. This year, the Jan Tschichold Award, which is endowed with 15,000 Swiss francs, is awarded to the typographer, type and graphic designer François Rappo from Lausanne. He has taught typography and graphic design at ECAL Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne since 1994 and significantly shaped the school’s reputation in these fields.

François Rappo combines a number of capabilities and fields relevant to the book. As a practitioner, in his role as typographer and type designer. As a theoretician, through his wide-ranging knowledge of book art and the history of typopgraphy and type design. Rappos merits in these fields are remarkable and his profound knowledge of typography and its history is coupled with a lively interest and openness towards technological innovation. Rappo’s characteristic fonts such as Theinhardt Grotesk, Didot Elder, Orso, Genath and others do not simply represent important contributions to contemporary type design but also contribute to the history of typography, as many of his fonts are based on the revision of rare or forgotten type styles. Many of his fonts can be found in the winning titles of The Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition of recent years.

Exhibitions and awards
From June 27 to 30th 2013, ‘The Most Beautiful Swiss Books‘ will be exhibited at the Helmhaus Zürich, alongside the simultaneous publication of the catalogue showcasing the competition (design: Aude Lehmann). On the occasion of the exhibition opening, the Jan Tschichold Award winner will be presented his award. In the context of the exhibition, a book fair, ʻPublishers‘ Tablesʻ, presenting recent publications from small Swiss and European presses, will be held on Saturday, June 29th, 2013.

In the autumn of 2013, the books will be shown at the School of Design in St. Gall, on the occasion of the type design conference Typo St. Gallen. The exhibition will also travel to CIRCUIT Espace d’art contemporain in Lausanne, and for the fifth time in as many years, the books will be exhibited in Lavin/Engadin. As in the previous year, all the submitted books en-tered into the competition will be displayed alongside the award-winning titles.

Hosted by a variety of institutions and local actors, the books will also travel to other cities abroad, such as London (Helvetic Centre), Oslo (Grafill), Paris (Centre culturel suisse), Vienna (Typographische Gesellschaft Austria) and others.

Catalogue The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2012 (published in June 2013)
Concept and design: Aude Lehmann
ISBN: 978-3-9523843-6-7
Texts: German, English, French, Italian
Photography: Scheltens & Abbenes, Amsterdam
Publisher: Federal Office of Culture, Bern
Publication date: June 2013
Swiss distribution: Buchzentrum Olten
Distribution Germany, Austria: Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz, info@typografie.de, www.typografie.de
International distribution: Idea Books, Amsterdam, idea@ideabooks.nl, www.ideabooks.nl

Address for enquiries

Anisha Imhasly, Cultural Production, Federal Office of Culture, Bern/Switzerland, Tel: +41 31 322 26 99, Fax: +41 31 322 78 34, anisha.imhasly@bak.admin.ch, www.swissdesignawards.ch/beautifulbooks