“Untitled” by London-based artist and designer Paul Elliman, top winner of the 2015 “Best Book Design from All Over the World.” (Photo : http://printtext.co)
Sometimes, people don’t need to open a book to appreciate it.
Winners of the “Beauty of Books in China” and Germany’s “Best Book Design from All Over the World” (“Schonste Buch aus aller Welt”) are on exhibit at the Shanghai Book Fair.
Part of the 2015 Shanghai Literary Festival, the book event runs from Aug. 19-25 at the Shanghai Exhibition Center in Nanjing West Road.
Annually held every March in Glamour Bar on Guangdong Road in Shanghai’s Huangpu District, the festival was moved in August this year because the place closed down in Dec. 2014.
The festival was founded in 2003 by Tina Kanagaratnam, CEO of AsiaMedia and former editor of Shanghai Daily (Dec. 1998-Sept. 2004); Australian Michelle Garnaut, restaurateur and cook and owner of the now-defunct Glamour Bar; and Australian Jenny Laing-Peach, a theater director, choreographer and performance arts educator.
Xu Jiong, director of the Shanghai Municipal Press and Publication Bureau (SMPPB), attended a press conference on July 23 for the 2015 Shanghai Book Fair.
“We hope the book fair can promote reading as a public hobby and bring readers more good-quality books,” said Xu, according to a report posted on the official website of the Information Office of the Shanghai Municipality on Aug. 13.
At the book fair, the exhibition has more than 40 winning books from the “Beauty of Books in China” and more than a hundred from “Best Book Design from All Over the World.”
“Beauty of Books in China” is presented by SMPPB. Its winners will serve as the country’s entries for the “Best Book Design from All Over the World” contest.
“Best Book Design from All Over the World” is an annual book design competition held since 1963 in the city of Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, as part of the Leipzig Book Fair.
In 1991, Stiftung Buchkunst (Book Art Foundation) became the contest organizer. The foundation, created in 1966, holds office in Frankfurt Rhine-Main and Leipzig.
As of 2014, “Beauty of Books in China” has had 251 winners, 13 of which won in “Best Book Design from All Over the World.”
Tibetan book designer Karma Durojetsereing, aka Wuyao, said that book designs are still not given much significance, and publishers will not pay the designer for any additional design-related work, reported Shanghai Daily.
Durojetsereing is a three-time recipient (2009, 2013 and 2014) of the “Beauty of Books in China” award.
