Het Meest Geloofde Sprookje

Book coverHet Meest Geloofde Sprookje
Book coverHet Meest Geloofde Sprookje
Book coverHet Meest Geloofde Sprookje
Book coverHet Meest Geloofde Sprookje

A children’s book about ‘money, faith in the economy, the culture of greed, mountains of gold and bursting bubbles’? That’s a brave and complex subject. In Dutch the authors and makers of this book (assisted by Lyanne Tonk), call themselves The Form Commuters (‘commuting between research and design and giving shape to your story’), and they have taken their name literally in a very special way. They try to explain a genuine problem in language that is easy to understand, and here they use circles. The book tells of the tribulations of a being – a bank being – which one day starts drawing circles. Demand for circles grows bigger and bigger, everyone wants them, and then the whole world is made of them. But that, of course, is when things go wrong. ‘Greed leads to disaster,’ as one panel member put it.

In terms of form, the circle is – literally – the driving-wheel of the story. Het Meest Geloofde Sprookje, with its Prussian blue and red and white fields, is attractively coloured and executed. There are references to paper collages and sometimes it seems as if we’re supposed to puzzle the story together ourselves. But in fact this works very well, the panel decided. Only the typography comes across as slightly forced and spiky, and it doesn’t always tie in well with the abstract illustrations. One conspicuous detail: the makers don’t believe in ‘a world where only money counts.’ Accordingly, it is also possible to order the book ‘in a different “currency”’. The fact that this book has already won a bronze medal at Best Book Design from all over the World in Leipzig is wholly unsurprising.

 

 

Bronze medal Best Book Design from all over the World, Leipzig 2016

Edition: 2015
Author: Anne-Marie Geurink, Annelou van Griensven
Language: Dutch
Final editor: Anne-Marie Geurink, Nelly Frouws
Publisher: De Vormforensen, Arnhem
Graphic designer: De Vormforensen, Arnhem in collaboration with Lyanne Tonk (illustrations)
Printer: Tielen, Boxtel
Binder: Abbringh, Groningen
Size book block (w x h x d in mm): 220 x 325 x 9
Number of pages: 32 p.
Print run: 700
Price: € 24.95
ISBN: 978 90 824196 0 3
Font and foundry: Folio (Linotype)
Binding style: sewn hardback with a flat spine, foil stamping on front cover, the book block is not trimmed at the head
Material: 100gsm Arcoprint Milk 1.5 (interior), 140gsm Amber Graphic (endpapers), 120gsm Wibalin Natural 500 White (binding)