The thirty-three Best Dutch Book Designs 2018 have been announced. A total of 295 entries were assessed for their distinctive qualities by a panel of experts looking for outstanding work in such areas as content, design, picture editing, typography, choice of materials, printing and binding.

This year’s panel of judges consisted of Michaël Snitker (designer), Mijke Wondergem (designer), Eelco van Welie (managing director, NAI010 publishers), Martijn Kicken (consultant at Tielen printers) and Suzanna Héman (assistant curator, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam).

The thirty-three books selected can be admired in an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to be held in the autumn, coinciding with the publication of this year’s catalogue.

Rosie Heinrich – We Always Need Heroes

We construct our reality by telling stories. And when faced with something that is inconsistent with our story, we most often find ways to reframe it, construe it to our convenience, or dismiss it. ‘Alternative facts,’ so to speak. But sometimes events take place that differ so profoundly from what we have told ourselves that our whole story seems in danger of caving in. When the banks collapsed in Iceland in 2008, not only did the country fall into a deep recession, they also found themselves in a ‘cultural crash’; the country’s collective reality turned out to be an illusion, a construct: fiction. This meta-dialogue is marked by a distinctive notation system as well as alternative texts, both of which are integrated within the subtitling of the work. These are the building blocks of a story that Heinrich combines with the building blocks of a tangible cultural landscape: images of sand, clay, lava, rock and pigment.

Design: Hans Gremmen | Production: Jos Morree, Marco Kokkelkoren, Grafiplaza, Boekbinderij Patist | Publisher: Fw:Books