The most beautiful Swiss books 2004 Commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, CHF25 As I write these words in my Zurich hotel room, fireworks are exploding outside to celebrate National Swiss Day. Inspired by the supposed founding of the country in 1291, these countrywide festivities often appear to be trying a bit too hard to convince the nation of its unified identity. No country is a single whole, but among its European neighbours, Switzerland is unique. It is the nation as amalgam. The cultural products that emerge from this society cannot – if they ever can anywhere – be interpreted against a single socio-political backdrop. Any object labelled Swiss is more accurately symptomatic of one of the four language regions. So to speak of the ‘International Typographic Style’, is really to refer to the work of a relatively small group of designers in the German-speaking region of northern Switzerland.