Publisher Valiz has been a safe bet for the creation of beautiful books for many years now. Outstanding that a publisher of this prestige still offers a platform to experimental designers and/or those just starting out, resulting in books with widely differing content and execution, but of a consistent high quality. Last year too we saw supple, lay-flat productions – such as this one – put together with absolute precision in all respects; a marvellous papery ‘activist’ abecedarium for academies.

The use of fluorescent pink immediately defines the organisation of the material – a super-simple, yet at the same time sophisticated approach. Unembellished by any further bells and whistles, No School Manifesto is a consistently executed reference work. The joke with the marker pen texts going through the page – even if you get it straight away – is an original and amusing printing idea. The subtle transparency of the dust jacket is a tactile element for the eye, with the manifesto printed on the inside providing an added typographical layer.

Including the pink in the CMYK system results in some places in pretty spectacular pages where the colour operates independently, and in others in perfectly normal pages printed in full colour. This play with printing techniques, fitting into a wider trend, simply and concretely pulls the images together. All done to a very high standard – high praise indeed is due to the lithographer.