Program Dedicated to Excellence in Visual Design to Honor Books in Five Categories at New York Rights Fair
NEW YORK, NY – January 8, 2019 – TALKING PICTURES: Selected Books is now open for submissions for the 2019 awards, for books published in 2018. TALKING PICTURES: Selected Books celebrates excellence in book design in five categories and is an offshoot of “TALKING PICTURES: The Visual Book Now,” a cultural initiative of the New York Rights Fair.
Three books in each of the five categories—contemporary art and photography; architecture and graphic design; children’s picture books; comic books and graphic novels; and cookbooks—will be selected along with special honorees by an expert panel of jurors renowned in their respective fields and drawn fromPublishers Weekly, Parsons School of Design and the Hamelin Cultural Association.
The deadline for submission is February 7, 2019. Winners will be announced later in February. Guidelines and details are available at https://www.newyorkrightsfair.com/talking-pictures.
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“TALKING PICTURES provides a platform to discuss excellence in the design of the visual book from a global perspective in New York City. We were overwhelmed last year with the number of books submitted from more than 500 publishers in the U.S. and around the world. It was a tangible indicator that there was a real need for this conversation, conducted with a sophisticated domestic and international audience,” said Krista Rafanello, New York Rights Fair show manager. “TALKING PICTURES is exciting and reflects New York Rights Fair’s core mission to provide a welcoming environment to connect and do rights business.”
The chosen books will be discussed in depth during a special panel at the New York Rights Fair on May 30, 2019, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. The books will also be on display at the New York Rights Fair, raising their global visibility. Following the panel, a reception with the honored authors, illustrators, photographers, designers and publishers will take place.
“TALKING PICTURES marks an entry into the global ecosystem of book publishing and art, where design and text meet and elevate each other within the context of the visual book,” said Ilaria Tontardini of the Hamelin Cultural Association.
TALKING PICTURES is a collaboration among the New York Rights Fair (NYRF), Hamelin Cultural Association and Parsons School of Design professor Steven Guarnaccia. The inaugural program honored books published in 2017 and received 511 submissions from 166 publishers from around the world. Members of the jury, including outside expert jurors Seymour Chwast and Jonathan Wajskol, then selected 30 notable books, which hailed from publishers in Japan, Italy, France, Switzerland, the U.K., Portugal, Spain, Canada and the U.S.