Workshop

This workshop invites participants to explore book design by selecting the most beautiful covers at the publishers’ stands at the fair. The activity will encourage discussions, with the publishers and between the participants, on the relationship between a book’s cover and its content. Participants will then create a handmade catalogue of the selected covers using a Risograph copier, producing a unique and collaborative publication. 

No specific knowledge is required, except for a strong interest in graphic design.

Maximage is an award-winning design studio based in Switzerland. It offers a large area of expertise including visual identities, digital solutions, books, posters, typefaces, artworks and consultancy. In its practice, tools and technology are constantly challenged, introducing a reflection on contemporary production processes. Over the years the studio has collaborated with institutions and clients in Switzerland and abroad. Long-term collaborations include art direction for the Zurich-based publishing house Edition Patrick Frey and the development of campaigns for Arsenic–Contemporary Peforming Arts Center. Parallel to its work, Maximage offers numerous workshops and lectures at Swiss and international universities. Members of the studio regularly teach at HEAD in Geneva, ZHDK in Zurich, as well as ECAL in Lausanne, where they conducted a research project on printing technologies, which resulted in the creation of Color Library. Maximage also manages the type design platform Maxitype that offers retail and bespoke typefaces and encourages research and development in typography. The work of Maximage received several awards from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in recognition to their commitment to the field. In 2020, the studio was honoured the Jan Tschichold Award.

Seminar 

New Left Books (which was renamed Verso Books in the early 1980s) was launched in 1970 in very different circumstances from the present. It was a product of the global movement of 1968 and the rising forces of the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist left across the world. As models for its publishing, NLB looked to France, Italy, and Germany. Now, over 50 years later, only Verso still survives from this cohort of radical publishers, although it has been joined by younger publishing houses. This talk will seek to understand who Verso has sought to meet the challenges of the changing epochs, adapting to some and resisting others, and has tried to redefine a new radical publishing project for the 21st century.” 

Sebastian Budgen (b. 1971) is Editorial Director (Europe) of Verso Books and is based in Paris. He studied at the University of Cambridge and worked at New Left Review before moving on to Verso in 2001. He is also a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism