The catalogue of 'The Best Dutch Book Designs 2008' presents the selection of thirty-three books published in the Netherlands in 2008 which distinguish themselves by the quality of their design, typography, printing, illustration and production, judged and compiled by Volken Beck, Vanessa van Dam, Nina Post, Fokko Tamminga and Jules Vermeulen.
"This year, 2009, sees the fiftieth time that books designed and produced in the Netherlands have been judged on their typographical merits in a straight competion. To mark this half-century the Stichting De Best Verzorgde Boeken, the Special Collections department of the Amsterdam University Library and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam had the idea, as a one-off event, of extending the range of the selection to the whole history of book production in the Netherlands. A special panel of judges was assembled and given the task of selecting another thirty-three books, this time from the five centuries of Dutch books- from about 1470 to roughly 1950, and including books from the Southern Netherlands produced up to 1580- and declaring them to be examples of the Netherlands' best book designs and production of that pre-modern era." (Just Enschede)