26th Annual Awards for The winning books will be exhibited internationally: in Germany, at the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs; and in Japan, at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, in conjunction with the Tokyo International Book Fair. In Canada, they will be shown in St. John's (NL), Wolfville and Halifax (NS), Fredericton (NB), Montréal (QC), Toronto (ON), Winnipeg (MB), Saskatoon (SK), Edmonton (AB), and Vancouver and Victoria (BC). Here is a summary of the results: the Society received 254 entries, from 9 provinces and 91 publishers, and selected 35 winning titles. The categories include: children, limited editions, pictorial, poetry, prose fiction, prose fiction illustrated, prose non-fiction, prose non-fiction illustrated, and reference.
Book Design Awards 2007
Winning books representing the best of the current Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada will be sent to the international book design competition in Leipzig, Germany, next February (2009), as they have been for the past several years. We are pleased to announce that one book from last year's Alcuin competition (2006 publications) was shortlisted in Leipzig. The designers were:
- JIM ROBERTS & ROBERT MAJZELS, designers of Apikoros Sleuth by Robert Majzels (Moveable Inc.)
The fundamental principle of the judging process is that each book must be considered as a total entity. The judges examine every aspect of each book, including the dust jacket, binding, endpapers, half-title page, copyright page, title page, page layout, typography, integration of illustrations, chapter openings, running heads, reproduction of illustrations, clarity of printing, choice of paper, footnotes, and bibliographical references.
This year, the judges elected not to award some prizes, which is noted in each category with an asterisk *. Their purpose, as is ours, is to encourage the very best in Canadian design, and they feel that giving awards only where they see exceptional merit is the best way to achieve this goal. The Alcuin Society is grateful to the judges for volunteering their time and considerable talent:
- Sue Colberg, Associate Professor and Associate Chair (Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Alberta);
- Jason Dewinetz (Greenboathouse Books, Vernon, BC), book designer, publisher, teacher;
- Tim Inkster (The Porcupine's Quill, Erin, ON), book designer, typographer, and press printer.