The 2025 China's "Most Beautiful Book" award winners Photos: Courtesy of East China Normal University Press

The results of the 2025 China's "Most Beautiful Book" awards were released in Shanghai on Sunday, with 25 titles from 22 publishing houses across 11 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions recognized this year. 

Experts told the Global Times that the 2025 selection reflects a growing trend: More book designers are drawing deeply from traditional Chinese culture, and this aesthetic shift is being increasingly acknowledged by international peers.

Gong Haiyan, editor-in-chief of the East China Normal University Press, one of the organizers, told the Global Times that the types of candidate books have changed noticeably in recent years. 

"The 'Most Beautiful Book' selections have shifted from large-volume works to more easy-reading books," Gong said. 

"This reflects a transformation in the publishing industry and book design concepts, highlighting the award's positive role in guiding design toward reader-friendly practices."

Gong noted that art books are a clear example of this shift. 

"Art books are usually beautifully bound with complicated designs. To make the package beautiful, the use of expensive materials and complex techniques was inevitable," she said. 

"After years, traditional books now have to win the market and readers' hearts with smaller and more refined designs. Many book reviewers said the awarded books are more affordable, accessible and 'biteful.'"

According to Gong, designers are increasingly using their imagination and creativity to combine diverse design elements and advanced technology with the aim of appealing to younger readers. 

The result is that books have become lighter and more accessible while Chinese designers stay closely aligned with global trends.

One of the awarded works this year was Echoes of the Wall: A Visual Catalog of Inscribed Brick Treasures from the Nanjing City Wall. 

Designer Zhou Chen from the Jiangsu Phoenix Education Publishing House told the Global Times that the book was created in collaboration with the Nanjing City Wall Protection and Management Center.

The Nanjing City Wall, the longest and largest existing city wall in China, contains hundreds of millions of bricks, each inscribed with markings that serve as an open-air trove of historical information. 

Through a campaign initiated by the Nanjing City Wall Protection and ­Management Center to collect the ancient bricks, the publisher compiled photographs of more than 100 bricks, some presented through traditional rubbing techniques.

"The book fully showcases the texture of the city wall bricks. With images close to the actual size of the bricks, it offers experts and ­researchers first-hand material while ­giving readers a tactile sense of history," Zhou said. 

Zhou, a long-time observer of the award, said China's book design sector has become increasingly diverse. 

"We can see deeper and closer links between content and design concepts, and designers' aesthetic ideas are being expressed in more personalized ways," he said. 

Although digital reading is widespread, Zhou said, "There is still great room for creativity in print-book design."  

"In exchanges with the world, our books are measured, the quality of ­publishing improves, and creative concepts develop," he said.

Zhang Zhiwei, chairman of the award jury and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Minzu University of China, said this year's selections included more plain-text and small-format books. 

He emphasized that heavily packaged and environmentally unfriendly books have been screened out, and pricing has shifted from previously high levels to more affordable ones.