“Best Books” is the subject of an annual workshop at Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem. “Best Book, Don’t Care or, Poor Form from Fringe Areas” resulted from the 2013 workshop led by Sophie Nys in collaboration with the participants of Year 13 and Year 14. Designed by Roland Früh, Sophie Nys & Yin Yin Wong.

Authors: Ronja Andersen, Danielle Aubert, Joel Colover, Valentina Desideri, Jason Dodge, Olya Domoradova, Paul Elliman, Rosie Eveleigh, Eloise Harris, Sarah Käsmayr, Maxine Kopsa, Raimundas Malasauskas, Robert Milne, Josse Pyl, Nerijus Rimkus, Charlotte Taillet, Maud Vervenne, Caroline Wolewinski.

As part of Speelplaats, a parallel program of Werkplaats Typografie, participants challenged what was being offered in the school’s curriculum by introducing improvements or suggesting alternatives. Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar brings together these contributions made to the Speelplaats program alongside other like-minded initiatives by participants, guests and tutors in the shape of examples as well as reference texts.

Edited and designed by Ronja Andersen and Nerijus Rimkus.

Being at once a school and at the same time not a school, a workspace, the WT tends to want to comment on its own distinctive form of academic pursuit (by way of, amongst other outlets, these School Journals). And during this sometimes faltering, sometimes successful quest, I’ve often thought about Jacques Rancière’s Ignorant Schoolmaster. Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, not least because it outlines an “intellectual adventure” whereby any hierarchy amongst the students and between them and their tutor dissolves.—Maxine Kopsa, ‘Editorial Considerations’ (excerpt)

Including the work of Guy de Cointet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Scott Ponik, David Lieske, Stephen Willats, Na Kim, Morgan Fisher, Karl Nawrot, Boy Vereecken, Cecilia Costa, Joris Kritis, Julie Peeters.