The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2025

Every year the The Federal Office of Culture (FOC) organises The Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition, which recognises excellence in book production and design, and highlights works that express contemporary trends.

The exhibition The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2025, designed by Sebastian Marbacher, showcases the 388 books that took part in the competition, including the 17 award-winning books. Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé, winners of the 2026 Jan Tschichold Award, have been given carte blanche to present their work in one of the exhibition rooms. The catalogue The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2025, designed by Sabo Day, will be presented for the first time at the vernissage. The Most Beautiful Swiss Books of the current and previous years, as well as this years catalogue, will be available for sale at the pop-up bookshop for the duration of the exhibition.

Organisation: Nicole Udry, Federal Office of Culture (FOC), Helmhaus

Photos: BAK/Gina Folly, ZAW/Urs Westermann

Jan Tschichold Award 2026

Since 1997, the FOC has presented the Jan Tschichold Award as part of the Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition to an individual, group or institution for outstanding achievement in book design. This year, the prize of 25,000 Swiss francs has been awarded to the Franco-Swiss duo Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé.

Coline Sunier (b. 1984, CH/FR) and Charles Mazé (b. 1982, FR) form a duo working as graphic designers and typographers. Previously based in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, they now live in Marseille and Paris. They held a fellowship at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. Coline Sunier teaches at the Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse (isdaT) and is an invited speaker at HEAD – Genève (Haute école d’art et de design). Charles Mazé supervises research projects at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT) in Nancy. Their work has been recognised with awards including the Prix Fernand Baudin (2011, 2013), the Prix unique du livre (2021, 2025) and a Silver Medal in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition (2022), as well as being named among the Most Beautiful Swiss Books (2025).

Their practice is characterised by a documentary, critical and pedagogical approach that regards signs, writing and typography as cultural, social and political phenomena, making the graphic designer a researcher and editor of forms. Sensitive to the uses of writing, to archives and to context, Sunier and Mazé combine exacting standards of form with conceptual thinking, as they explore graphic design through their research, publications and teaching.

Through their collaborations with numerous cultural institutions and schools of art and design, most notably in France, Switzerland and Italy, and with a practice attuned to dynamics of exchange and knowledge circulation, they help to reinvigorate graphic design from a collective, transdisciplinary perspective.