Studio Johannes Bissinger's catalogue for the "WORLD'S BEST BOOK DESIGN"

Studio Johannes Bissinger’s catalogue for the Stiftung Buchkunst, a compilation of the “BEST BOOK DESIGN FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD,” is a publication I’ve had on my desk since it arrived in the post last week, and which nobody has been able to walk past without picking it up to thumb through and remark “ooh, this is nice.”

The premise of the catalogue, which was put together after the judging of the international book design competition, was to showcase the successful entries, separated into gold, silver and bronze medals and honorary appreciations. “The concept was to find a simple form to present the 14 winners, and give a feeling for the books,” Johannes explains in his accompanying letter. “We took shots directly after the jury session in the National Bibliothek, Leipzig. To give it a kind of international feel, I decided to select/edit ‘fortune-texts’ to each book; like a little comment, but not too serious.”

Each of the winning books was photographed by Conny Mirbach and printed full bleed on a single page, which is then twinned with a blank white space, making the catalogue feel delightfully non-hierarchical in its presentation. The cover is also made of an oddly textural, pearlescent stock, and the book scattered through with lines of colloquial text which make it feel more like a note from an old friend than a catalogue. A fitting tribute to the “BEST BOOK DESIGN FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD,” in Johannes’ words.