Best German Book Design 2024

The tension is high from the start, thanks to the playfully stroppy but very self-aware pronouncements of the first-person narrator....

The tension is high from the start, thanks to the playfully stroppy but very self-aware pronouncements of the first-person narrator. The dynamic within this group of youngsters reveals that holiday camp can be less than fun.

For a story book, the format is quite broad, though the large type size, chosen to reflect the young age of the book’s readers, offers an explanation. Also worthy of note is the non-hyphenated, ragged-right type, though this, too, is a valid choice; it avoids gappy justified text and prevents the reader’s flow from being interrupted, albeit at the expense of the aesthetic ideal of perfectly justified text. The type area with its upright, unassuming serif font is anything but impenetrable, large spacings and wide margins help to guard against flagging attention, while a yellow spot colour, used for the bold, sans serif page numbers and illustrations, enlivens the page design. 

The ratio of text volume to sparingly employed, stylistically homogeneous images ensures it never comes across as a picturebook; at the same time, the full-bleed, double-page brush illustrations act almost like stage sets. Illustrations are also set within text pages, featuring as vignettes, isolated drawings and even surrounded by a column of shaped type. And then there are those nasty little mosquitoes, a recurring ornament throughout the book. The wolf at the door, however, refers the narrator’s own ill-defined fear.

The front cover illustration shows smooth, gridded façades looming in the background above roofs and brick chimneys. Even before the...

The front cover illustration shows smooth, gridded façades looming in the background above roofs and brick chimneys. Even before the first chapter begins, the leaden atmosphere grows heavier still: in a cityscape that blends Los Angeles, Paris and Hong Kong, elevated urban motorways arc past dormer-studded mansard roofs set against a backdrop of towering skyscrapers. All this is rendered in positively meticulous fashion in fine gradations of monochrome shading – and therein lies the nub of the story. 

On the very first day after her family’s move to a new city, daughter Robin realises that the future is anything but bright. At first you could be forgiven for thinking the sombre visual mood is simply down to the dreary weather. But when Robin stops at a paint shop and peers in through the window, we see her eyes widen as she understands that there’s something very wrong here. All the tubes contain grey paint – mouse grey, ash grey, green grey, stone grey. In fact, every single thing in this city is grey. A dystopian crime story then unfolds as we discover that the greyness is systematically organised: the city is run by a kind of grey cartel. 

A striking detail is the mix of cars on the roads: there are American gas-guzzlers alongside East German Trabants and other 1970s models. Thanks to such retro touches, the cinematically composed images send a subtle message that both planned economies and consumer societies can lead to uniformity. Without wishing to give any spoilers, let’s just say that, as the tale unfolds, the reader learns the difference between subtractive and additive colour mixing.

Cloth-embossed paper clads the stiff cover boards of this slender, almost classically formatted book. With its sections of glossy print...

Cloth-embossed paper clads the stiff cover boards of this slender, almost classically formatted book. With its sections of glossy print varnish, it’s a surface that recalls the printed upholstery of public transport seating. 

The titular bus is almost full, even though it’s still dark outside. Everyone is tired and the mood downbeat. A striking-looking figure gets on, chooses a seat next to someone with “YEAH” printed on their baseball cap and says, “Hiiiii!”. But no one feels like talking. 

Bushes and trees feature lush, vibrant green foliage, red accents amplify the dominant cyan, and violet details elevate the bold yellow. Wax crayon has been overpainted in layers until it gets greasy, then been scratched away again to reveal the surface beneath, repeatedly teasing out little details. Thanks to frequency-modulated screening, the nuances of colour and texture are evenly and superbly reproduced. As a result, the images, pop luminously against the matt paper.

The odd juxtaposition of grumpiness and eccentricity in this thrown-together group promises to quickly lift the mood. Passengers respond with a mix of irritation and amusement – “huh!” says one, “hmmyeh” another – as outside it gradually starts to get light. The anarchic images never feature complete sentences, just interjections that float out of the bus’s windows in speech bubbles. By the end, there’s a tour party atmosphere as the bus hurtles round bends. 

Even the map of the world on the front end paper is unconventional, it uses a projection that reflects actual...

Even the map of the world on the front end paper is unconventional, it uses a projection that reflects actual surface area. Similarly unconventional is the novel criterion this read-aloud book uses to categorise animals, namely the shape of their ears. 

Each animal representing a particular ear shape is depicted on a double page, with a large display image on the left-hand side and brief texts plus detail images opposite – the latter are either isolated or set in rounded boxes. All manner of typesetting styles are used: ragged left, ragged right, centred, justified, shaped. The typefaces are hand-lettered, be it the font for the typeset matter or the individually drawn lettering for the species names – the body matter is dark brown, while the names are colour-matched to the animals. A glossary and an index provide genuine reference-work functionality. On the back end paper are outlines of the animals in proportion to their actual sizes. 

In mische technique, the illustrations feature a pastel palette of green, yellow, sand and brown hues. The book pages look as though they are bathed in soft, scattered light, while spatial depth comes not just from the usual shading, specific individual elements also seem to have been brightened with pale chalk, which lifts them from the background. Another trick enables the paper white to be used like a colour: by generally adding just a few per cent of yellow to the white spaces, the lightest bits of the drawings seem even brighter than their surroundings. 

This bed-time story is about the enchanting life of a grandma in a fantastical forest. She’s not just an abstract...

This bed-time story is about the enchanting life of a grandma in a fantastical forest. She’s not just an abstract figure, however; by referring to her as “my imaginary grandmother”, the narrator establishes a personal connection.

The basic colour scheme sets warm inky blue against cool bronze-tinged ochre, with a palette of pink, pale beige, light blue and light yellow spanning these two poles. Within this sophisticated framework, the author uses her keen compositional eye to imbue the episodic double-page spreads with a captivating vibrancy. The stylised forms feature simple, mostly rounded outlines that, although they initially seem like digital vector graphics, exhibit minimal deviations that testify to their careful, manual creation. Further evidence of the analogue approach can be seen in the spattered dots of the sparingly used shading. 

To go back to the predominantly curvilinear forms: the circle – the perfect curve – is a recurring theme that features in all conceivable sizes. It is the glue that holds the compositions together, uniting everything from the i-dots and umlauts to the full stops in the two-line rhymes. It’s not immediately obvious whether the lettering is in a humanist font or whether it was penned by hand. In the end, it doesn’t really matter because such ambiguity is integral to the book’s underlying charm.