What a burly and what a stupendously well-made arts college catalogue this is! With a power play like this, the Design Academy in Eindhoven demonstrates not only that it takes its students seriously, but also that it genuinely helps them find their own direction. And it’s fantastic that it does. It’s a fine reference work, and browsing its pages allows one to gain a flavour of present trends.
The format is magnificent, and the fact that this makes it possible for the names of all the new graduates to be paraded on the spine is a demonstration of how much the academy appreciates them.
The book’s structure has been well thought out: the editing is good, the typography exciting, the photographs have been lithographed with care and the printing throughout is pin-sharp. The occasional half page creates intriguing new cross-connections that are yet more proof that this book is simply too well made to be simply put aside. In short, it lifts the concept of the course catalogue to a higher and more professional plane. And as it seemed to us, it serves an even greater good: in international terms this is sublime PR for all the Netherlands’ art colleges and academies.