Tag: design show

Please note: This article is now also available on SPINE.

The annual Association of University Presses (AUPresses) Book, Jacket, and Journal Show has announced its winners for items published during 2024. The show, now in its 60^th year, “honors the university publishing community’s design and production professionals. By recognizing achievement in design, production, and manufacture of print publications, it also sparks thoughtful, creative, and resourceful publishing design in the future.”

“The impressive compilation of this year’s award-winning books is evident of the commitment, skill, and craftsmanship alive and well in academic publishing. It has been an honor not only to witness this work, but to feel its impact.”

— AUPresses Show Judge Lara Minja, Lime Design Inc., Victoria, British Columbia

Entries are extensive — up to 575 this year, from universities all over the world — with the winners are separated into eight categories. Some of my favorites are listed below, but by no means all of them; this post is long enough as is.

Grab a refreshing beverage, pull up a chair, and enjoy.

Please note: This is one of those posts that’s better seen in full width. Please click on the title, above, to get there. Thanks.

Scholarly Typographic

Japanese … in cursive. Typography? Dunno, but the overall look is great.

One of the great things about this show is seeing an entire cover (or jacket). Note here the great treatment of filing/info in the upper left, the publisher in the lower left, and how well they tie in with the author info on the front. Love the skulls, too., and even the bar code is well-handled. Kudos all around.

The goodness continues inside, too; the contents spread is fantastic. Nice.

Eye-catching and interesting illustrations that become an integral part of the design. Well done.

See the rest of the category entries here.

Scholarly Illustrated

Essential American historical photographs, presented in exactly the right way.

The cover is great, but that section title spread…!

I don’t suffer from insta-buy often, but a copy of this title was ordered for my library the moment I saw it. Excellent on every level.

Great to see this title from UTexas (another example of why university presses are essential — in every political environment.) The great design is deserved … and received.

Fabulous cover combined with well-handled interior design, the contents and chapter numbers especially.

Honorable mention for the art and typography in Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America. See all the entries in the category here.

Trade Typographic

Love this jacket, from the type boxes and general typography to color choices; a great way to handle black-and-white photographs in a dynamic way. Special mention for the author’s photo.

Perfect title, handled with aplomb — the juxtaposition of the two pages, above, is brilliant.

Honorable mentions to the endpapers in Consider the Turkey and illustrations in Devoured. See all the entries in the category here.

Trade Illustrated

Good cover — the shape of the chair on the back is used well — with a fab contents spread, well-done callout pages (love the yellow), and awesome timeline design. As pages on seating go, these do, in fact, stand out.

It’s only appropriate that a book on book design is laid out well — no pressure. It’s approachable for folks not familiar with the lingo and systems, and deserving of the selection.

For the Bees’ subtitle reads, “A Handbook for Happy Beekeeping,” and the design and illustrations work hard to meet that goal. Get the buzz: another deserving title.

The back cover rocks. There’s also good use of “the aged look” — with bonus points for “tape” — and great typography, especially the great layout from the chronology department. It all adds up to a very well-deserved selection. (Getty Publications is the educational arm of the Getty Museum, by the way.)

Honorable mention to Uta Barth for great layout. See all the selections for Trade Illustrated here.

Poetry and Literature

The wide spine tape is definitely a look this year (because it works), but it’s the illustrations that carry the day here.

Book design for poetry is a tough thing to do well. Left Turns in Brown Study does the work and earns this win.

See all the entries in this category.

Journals

Honorable mention to Monsoon, the Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim, for being there at all, and The Hopkins Review for layout. See those and the other selected entry here.

Reference

I did not expect something with this title to have standout design, but taking inspiration from money — often the very definition of great design — was a genius move. The spread above, though, proves that the book was treated with thoughtfulness and thoroughness throughout. Kudos.

Another insta-buy. (Score: 2–0, Princeton.) I’d like to make this title required reading for book design clients everywhere.

With the pandemic still visible in the rear-view mirror, this title should be on the shelf in every government department, in every location worldwide (and the shelves of a good chunk of the general public, too). Great layout and good use of color, with bonus points for the contents spread, add to this approachable book — well done.

See all the selections in the Reference category.

Jackets and Covers

There were a stack of books in this (largest) category; it was tough not to list more than I have. Let’s dig into it, in alphabetical order:

Great colors, great photograph, great script on the cover — basically, the whole thing.

An unexpected combination handled well; the colors and style are right.

Erasure for the win. (Irony, too.)

Compelling combo of photographs and title, with a great type treatment running along the right edge. Perfect texture, too. “Best available,” indeed.

“Feel good” in all the right ways, from photography to typography. Have a treat.

Scholarly title meets pop culture book design. Bonus points for texture.

Book design heavy hitter David Drummond nails it with a creative hint hit at the National Examiner, America’s poshest paper.

Another from the cutting edge of book design trends, and another that feels “just right.”

“Unexpected style,” the Out-In-Left-Field department said. Overall pick, surely.

Signs of a design done well, especially “the” in a shield — nice. (I might just have to read this title to test out the theory of finding anything on the Jersey Turnpike.)

Familiar and compelling while simultaneously fresh and compelling, if that makes any sense. I like.

Tracks perfectly.

If there were ever a better illustration of gaslighting…. (Also, grain. And did I mention that it’s one color!?)

Specter, indeed: those caps could be eyes, fingerprints, pick something. Great use of texture on this one, too.

The unexpected choice of pink here works together with the type and illustrations to make this potentially difficult title approachable.

Front cover treatment for all the wins — awesome.

Stamping out. (Also, color blocks.)

Chef’s kiss collage … and title treatment.

Yes. Seriously, just “yes.”

Not sure what this is a photograph of, and that’s just right for the title. Props to both the designer and art director who approved it. (West Virginia. Just a reminder.)

Splattered with drops of … brilliance.

Title and treatment in perfect sync, this analysis says.

Honorable mentions to Just City and London for doing cities justice; Resistant Practices in Communities of Sound for the waves (and title, frankly); The Fenway Effect for The Wall; and the Phoenix Poets Series for illustration. See the whole Jackets and Covers category here.

• • •

That’s a bunch of book design — thanks for going through ’em with me — and a bunch of great titles from university and academic presses that so often go overlooked in a world that seems to value education less and less every day. Congratulations to all for their entries, wins, and effort. See you next year!

See all the entries at the AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show website, or read the press release.

See also: The 2024 and 2023 posts on AUPresses winners here on Foreword.

Significantly behind on this for the second year in a row. Apologies. —Ed.

The annual Association of University Presses (AUPresses) Book, Jacket, and Journal Show has announced its winners published during 2023. The show, now in its 59th year, “honors the university publishing community’s design and production professionals; recognizes achievement in design, production, and manufacture of print publications; and serves as a spark to conversations and source of ideas about intelligent, creative, and resourceful publishing.”

It is a joy to be amid the rush of creativity and exuberance that is exemplified by the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show submissions. Our jurors were spoiled with the wide variety of visual and intellectual expressions that make our community so rich and diverse. The committee members really came through as a team, making this year’s efforts virtually seamless. Here’s to another great Show!

— David Zielonka, Stanford University Press, Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Committee chair

Entries are extensive — 507 worldwide — and the winners are separated into several categories, which I’ve drawn from below.

Scholarly Typographic

Academia’s titles are so often subjects that you only get from university presses. A great example:

When important titles are accompanied by compelling design, everyone benefits. Honorary mention to Horror and Harm, whose design invokes neither. See all the winning entries.

Scholarly Illustrated

Because these winning entries are from all over the globe, they run the risk of being difficult for us ’Muricans to understand. But design is a universal language:

The cover’s good, but one of the great things about this show is that you get more:

I’m a sucker for an interesting content spread, as demonstrated here.

I love the dingbats next to the page numbers, too; a great way to instantly illustrate which section you’re in.

Strong cover here, with the two shades of overlay really working in concert with the orange. Oh, and another — you guessed it — great content section, like this spread:

Nice. See all of the entries from the Scholarly Illustrated section.

Trade Typographic and Poetry and Literature

Honorable mention to the jacket for Rim to River in the former category and the illustrations in The Lamb Cycle in the latter. See all the Trade Typographic winners and the Poetry and Literature winners.

Trade Illustrated

Some incredibly talented photographers on display here, but one leapt ahead:

More about the photography than design, admittedly, but still great stuff. Honorable mention to Looking at Venezuela, 1928-1978, which combines more-than-interesting photography with another eye-catching contents spread.

See all the Trade Illustrated winners here.

Reference

Couple of titles to highlight:

A outstanding example of the cover being good, but the jacket in its entirely being more than the sum of its parts. Also:

Not resorting to stereotypes or tropes was absolutely the right move, and the strong interior design works well, too. Nice.

See all the Reference winners here.

Jacket and Cover

This section is far and away the largest, and features some outstanding examples of book design — from any publisher — in subject areas that don’t always lend themselves to dynamic design. Some of my favorites, in alphabetical order:

Simple concept, well executed.

Strong image on this cover works extremely well with the green background and orange fire (and spine). Excellent.

Love the illustration choices on the cover, with exactly the right background and interesting hand-lettering-style title.

Double-exposure, something hard to execute well and done perfectly here, is exactly the right choice on this strong cover.

Simply put, excellent: a two-color jacket with fantastic lettering and great texture.

The hint of a face and the illustration within the outline combine to make this a winner on several levels.

Oh, that O! (The rest of the type is awesome, too.) Aged to perfection.

Illustration and type combine to achieve a fantastic jacket.

This cover made an appearance on my 2023 Favorite Book Covers list, and I’m delighted to see AUPresses recognize it, too.

Another example of simple-done-well. Love the orange.

Color blocking perfection: a lesson in how-to using limited color choices.

Great illustration, strong type, fabulous colors. (Interestingly….)

Another that avoids stereotypes with a great background. The hint of megaphones is smartly done.

Brilliant: I love everything about this cover.

Honorable mentions go to the type on Divine Days and the open book on Some Unfinished Chaos. See the whole category of winners here.

Looking forward to next year! (Let’s hope I can post about it in a timely manner.)

See also: Last year’s winners highlighted here on Foreword.