De Best Verzorgde Boeken 2012

Published every year for decades, the catalogue of the Best Dutch Book Designs is, each time, the chance for a designer to propose their own vision of the book as object, dissecting its design, materiality, content and small details through their own eyes and interests.

For 2013, looking back on the books awarded for 2012, the catalogue was designed by Studio Joost Grootens (Joost Grootens with Dimitri Jeannottat, Freya Clijmans, François Girard-Meunier, Slávka Pauliková and Hanae Shimizu), and it’s nothing short of the most exquisite example of the Dutch designer’s singular approach, known for his work on atlases, indexes and dictionaries.

The book takes the form of a single huge uncut folder, offering a very strange reading experience, sometimes almost frustrating, that forces the reader not just to leaf through but to truly dive into the complexity of the minimal infographics and the false simplicity of the layout.

A gorgeous piece of editorial design, in some ways reminiscent of Joost Grootens’ bestseller I Swear I Use No Art at All, released a few years earlier, but with a far more approachable price tag.

The catalogue was published in 2013 to accompany the De Best Verzorgde Boeken 2012 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which ran from 14 September to 27 October 2013.