Professor Emeritus Dick Hebdige and Dutch artist Ruchama Noorda have received the Best Dutch Book Designs Award for their collaborative book,  As Above, So Below

Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Dick Hebdige and Dutch artist Ruchama Noorda, who have received the Best Dutch Book Designs Award for their collaborative book,  As Above, So Below  (Jap Sam Books, June 2022).  The book features Noorda’s work, spanning 25 years of her career as a multi-media artist, with texts by Hebdige.  This is the oldest award of its kind in Europe and reflects the historically high status accorded  book design and book culture in the Netherlands.

[Here’s an excerpt from their website:]

 

“The Netherlands has a long tradition of outstanding book design and production. This applies not only to the quality of the country’s design and publishing tradition but also to the technical mastery of lithography, printing and binding. The somewhat old-fashioned term ‘best verzorgd’, which covers more than design or production alone, has always been used in the knowledge that what the judges select are books, and not simply book designs. In every really well-made book content and form come together: each and every well-produced book is the product of a collaboration between a client (usually a publisher), a designer and the book production industry.The division of roles between the … partners varies constantly.”

The 33 winners selected from the 262 books submitted in the 2022 contest will be on display in the Audi gallery of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 8 October – 6 November and will then be exhibited in various locations in the Netherlands and internationally.. The winning submissions will also be the subject of a catalog to be published by ideabooks.nl.