— Delphine Bedel

Award: The Most Beau­ti­ful Swiss Books 2010

The Detroit Diary by Jimini Hignett, designed by Anna Haas, 2010

Nominated for the Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2010

The artist book ‘The Detroit Diary’ by Jimini Hignett, designed by Anna Haas and edited by Delphine Bedel was one of the 19 books nominated for the award. ‘The Most Beau­ti­ful Swiss Books‘ com­pe­ti­tion was es­tab­lished to pro­mote and re­ward top-qual­ity book de­sign in Switzer­land. It was es­tab­lished at the be­hest of the fa­mous ty­pog­ra­pher and de­signer Jan Tschi­chold in 1943. The com­pe­ti­tion is open to graphic de­sign­ers, pub­lish­ers and print­ers. An­nu­ally, the Fed­eral Of­fice of Cul­ture re­ceives around 400 sub­mis­sions. A five-mem­ber, in­ter­na­tion­ally staffed jury, cur­rently chaired by Cor­nel Windlin, se­lects the most beau­ti­ful Swiss books each year.

What qual­i­fies as a Swiss book?: A book is con­sid­ered a Swiss book when it ful­fils at least one of the fol­low­ing three cri­te­ria: the book was de­signed by a Swiss de­signer, the pub­lisher has its head­quar­ters in Switzer­land, or the printer has its head­quar­ters in Switzer­land. The jury’s cri­te­ria: In judg­ing the sub­mis­sions to the com­pe­ti­tion, the jury takes into ac­count each book’s over­all con­cept, graphic de­sign and ty­pog­ra­phy, and pays par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to in­no­va­tion and orig­i­nal­ity.

The Most Beau­ti­ful Swiss Books Jury includes:
Cornel Windlin, Küssnacht am Rigi [Chair of the Jury]
Christoph Schifferli, Ascona
Lars Müller, Oslo (NO)
Will Holder, Hatfield (UK)

The Most Beau­ti­ful Swiss Books