Columbia University Press wins big at the New York Book Show

The winners for the New York Book Show (an annual design competition hosted by the Book Industry Guild of New York) were announced last week. We’re proud to share that Columbia University Press won in eight categories this year, an incredible achievement.

The winners are:

Violence and Civility (jacket design)
Designer: Chang Jae Lee
“The book discusses the insidious causes of violence, racism, nationalism, mass dispossession, and ethnic cleansing worldwide. The (in)advertent black ink blots around the handwritten type, with the introduction of magenta, are meant to hint at blood drops as the visual effects of violence.”

The Hillary Doctrine (jacket design)
Designer: Jordan Wannemacher
“I was excited to work on this book because it was about such an important piece of foreign policy and feminist history. We printed this on a beautiful foil paper that metallicized the flag and the type. The result was an authoritative cover with a lot of visual depth.”

The Wheel (book design)
Designer: Jordan Wannemacher
“I opted for a delicate design, incorporating elements that gave the suggestion of a wheel on both the cover and interior that would not distract from the 110 carefully considered images in the book. Like the wheel, the book needed to be simple and speak for itself.”

Spirals (book design)
Designer: Lisa Hamm
“Spirals by Nico Israel was a great book to design. It started by finding just the right painting for the cover. I decided to recreate the mechanical spiral from the cover image for the interior design and used it as a design element to display the chapter numbers. This worked out perfectly, just enough spokes and chapters. Overall, this was one of those books where everything seemed to come together.”

The Age of Sustainable Development (jacket design)
Designer: Lisa Hamm
“I had a great image to work with for the cover. I wanted to add a subtle luminosity to it. I decided to print the image on metallic paper. It added just the right touch of sparkle to the image.”

Stem Cell Dialogues (jacket design)
Designer: Charles Brock/Faceout Studio
“For the cover I wanted to illustrate the idea of the interaction of dialogue. By placing parts of the stem cell imagery over the title type, it shows that interaction and gives a sense of depth to the cover. The use of metallic stock on the jacket helps to emphasize that depth and catch the eye of the consumer.”

In Their Voices (jacket design)
Designer: Milenda Lee
“Any cover designer will tell you they spend hours and hours searching for the right photo or the perfect piece of art that will convey the content of the book on its cover. Once I saw this photo I immediately knew this was the one. The only thing left for me to do was to place the type so that it didn’t intrude on the intimacy of the mother cradling the baby.”

The Lost Garden (jacket design)
Designer: Vin Dang
“In working through various cover concepts for The Lost Garden, which encapsulates the personal and family history of the protagonist, the designer sought to visually convey the idea of a woman on a painful (and at times, dark) journey of confronting a self-identity crisis while being caught in the crosshairs of modern love, lust, and gender politics. The intent was to remain whimsical yet relevant while simultaneously maintaining an underlying revisionist conceit that belies the author’s emotional attachment to the subject matter.”