The Best German Book Design 2023

This correspondence between two sisters – one a sculptor, the other a poet, both notable figures in the cultural scene...

This correspondence between two sisters – one a sculptor, the other a poet, both notable figures in the cultural scene of 1970s New York – was published to coincide with a retrospective of Rosemary Mayer’s diaphanous textile works.

It is presented here in the form of a dust-jacketed soft-cover book. The spine-taped book block has been cased in and glued at the spine’s edges to create a hollow back for optimum ease of opening, then wrapped in a jacket that’s attached only to the inner cover’s spine. The outer panels and flaps feature swirling patterns of ink-blue pigment mixed with water; over these are printed understated title lines in typewriter font. Their dark red lettering is foil stamped, creating a light impression reminiscent of genuine typewriting, and seems to be surrounded with very fine edges of light and shadow. Accompanying texts such as introductions, footnotes and the appendix also use this typewriter font. For the correspondence itself, two similar roman typefaces were chosen – a slightly old-style roman for Bernadette and a somewhat more modern style for Rosemary. 

The swirling cover motif recurs on the chapter dividers, which are of a slightly thicker weight than the light book paper and have been individually glued in between the stitched quires. This results in a pleasingly tactile effect: run your thumb over the splayed foredge and you find it naturally pausing at each new chapter.

Publishers: Lenbachhaus, Ludwigforum, Spike Island, Swiss Institute. 

Most of Europe’s housing was built in the 30 years following World War Two. A key role in that process...

Most of Europe’s housing was built in the 30 years following World War Two. A key role in that process of renewal was played by modern urban planning concepts inspired by the pioneering but underexploited ideas of the interwar era. This study shows how ambitious new apartment block schemes were developed across Europe.

The book comes wrapped in a loose cloth-bound jacket, the front of which is in black and white. Inside, however, are pastel-hued flaps and panels, a nod to the cheery colours that characterised the 1950s. The page design is based on two different grid variants, one with six and one with four columns. Technical project details are spread across the six-column pages, which allow for varying image widths. The four-column variant is used to structure the essays, though here too images can be accommodated with the columns. The extra-wide paragraph indents, meanwhile, take their cue from the six-column widths, creating appealing typographical cross-references.

The large format of this almost 400-page volume is less about showcasing full-page architectural photographs, though these are also present. Above all, it enables photos both historical and contemporary to be juxtaposed with original plans. In addition, the authors have eschewed the usual laconic or epigrammatic captions; instead, images set within the type area are accompanied by detailed commentaries that are aligned with the introductory text. These can be read as a continuation of the latter and a deeper dive into the subject. Text and design in perfect harmony.

In 1991, a new Berlin night club opened in what were the vaults of a department store from the Roaring...

In 1991, a new Berlin night club opened in what were the vaults of a department store from the Roaring Twenties. That basement space served as a locus for underground dance music, specifically for techno.

This book’s photo section opens with a half-smiley that’s turned sideways. This is followed by a stream of photographs, in which posters promise a “hallucinatory programme of events” and images stop abruptly in the middle of a spread only to re-emerge on other pages. The club-night scenes are reproduced using 10 to 20 lpi halftone screens – an extremely low-tech look for such a high-octane context. The huge halftone dots are a visual translation of the staccato pounding of the drum machines, a reprographic cipher for the repetitive beats. The resolution blurs outlines and has a levelling effect, dots condensing to create a polychromatic swirl, punctuated by flares of brightness, the relentless music seeming to stop for a moment, its pounding bass lost in the darkness, a belly-button piercing twinkling in the spotlights.

The typography’s negative leading squeezes the lines together, lending a new dimension to skim-reading: the letters are so close together that your gaze encompasses myriad stories at once as it attempts to vertically navigate the thickets of type.

The black cover feels like a waxed outer skin. On it your fingers trace a graffiti-style symbol. Some will think it an ominous rune, others know it as a universally recognised signal: it is of course the Tresor logo.

“Self-empowerment in childhood” might be a fair summary of this book’s pedagogical approach. It’s an ambitious goal for a world...

“Self-empowerment in childhood” might be a fair summary of this book’s pedagogical approach. It’s an ambitious goal for a world of both limited and unlimited possibilities. How can a child tell whether choice is a luxury or a curse? 

“What should I do today?” is just the first of many questions asked within, questions that are each met with a plethora of possible answers. One double page presents various hairstyles and asks whether the reader would like a completely different one. This latter spread provides a particularly good example of the book’s visual strategy: black-and-white drawings of children’s heads are arranged on a slightly grainy, salmon-hued backdrop, showcasing a range of styles that is neither stereotypical nor surreal and caricatured. Instead, the variants are all realistic, not least thanks to the way they are illustrated. It’s a pleasure to simply scrutinise and compare the different kinds of hairstyle – even for those who are happy with their own. The illustrative style calls to mind the way a child holds a pen, and this makes the images all the more relatable. That they manage to capture the essence of a form via just a few simple lines – without resorting to clichés – suggests a deep understanding of the connections between details and whole. 

Full-colour pages alternate with white-background pages, some calm, some stimulating, some appetite-whetting, but always using a pastel palette and eschewing technically flawless colour blocks. Their variety nods to life’s many possibilities and is testament to the skill of their illustrator and author, Julie Morstadt.

Wolfen is where East Germany’s entire output of camera film was made. The work was mostly done by women, but...

Wolfen is where East Germany’s entire output of camera film was made. The work was mostly done by women, but previously forced labour was also used. The light sensitivity of the film required darkness, meaning the work went unseen.

Wolfen is also a multimedia installation by Tobias Zielony, in which the artist explores the dialectic relationship between exposure and darkness at this eerie place. Key to it is the photochemical soup that gives birth to images and even allows information to be stored for up to a thousand years. The material may live on, but the circumstances of its creation will be long forgotten, be it the use of animal-derived gelatine for film coatings, the contamination of waste water with silver compounds or the steam generated during production, not to mention the smell.

And finally Wolfen is the name of this book that gives permanent, printed form to Zielony’s temporary installation. In it, we see photos of women in oddly dance-like poses, the camera’s flash picking them out against the darkness. Brief quotes from former employees describe the nature of the work; their words are set opposite the images on paper so thin that, in the solid black areas, the ink shows right through. It’s not that they are printed too pale. Instead, this spectral, veil-like effect is created by very fine halftoning. On other pages, areas of coarse grey are suggestive of white noise, or perhaps coded signals from outer space. In fact, they are highly condensed QR codes. Today, the Wolfen plant makes archival film that lasts for up to 1,000 years; it allows QR codes to be stored as analogue images that can be used to decode the digital source data. Conservation for information – lest it become obscured by the veil of time.