Books: the best thing since sliced bread!

In this National Year of Reading, it seems appropriate that the Powerhouse Museum would mount a small display celebrating excellence is Australian book design and publishing. Held in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the Australian Publishers Association’s (APA) annual Book Design Awards (BDA) and the 2012 Sydney Writers Festival, Cover story: 60 years of Australian book design showcases numerous BDA catalogues and over 60 award winning and highly commended books, including a selection of impressive award winning photography books.

The image on the cover of the 1998 BDA catalogue (illustrated above) and the conceptual caption, Books: the best thing since sliced bread! printed on the back cover, metaphorically highlight the relevance and significance of books and reading in everyday life.

The catalogue was designed by Dean Lahn of Lahn Stafford Design, Adelaide in collaboration with conceptual photographer Andrew Dunbar. APA invited Lahn to create the catalogue as he had designed a landmark book titled Body Piercing ( a self initiated project which was also produced in collaboration with photographer Andrew Dunbar), that was awarded both the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Best Designed Book of the Year award and the Collins Booksellers Best Designed Jacket of the Year award in the 1998 BDA awards.

1998 BDA catalogue reproduced courtesy Australian Publishers Association

Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven

Design by Dean Lahn
Photography by Andrew Dunbar
© All rights reserved

Tags: books, exhibitions, graphic design, photography

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.