The "World Book Design 2020-21" exhibition, being held for the fourteenth time at the P&P Gallery, introduces 130 or so award-winning books from the "Best Book Design from all over the World" competition as well as the 54th Japan Book Design Awards and competitions held in Germany, China, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation or postponement of various competitions last year and this year or compelled organizers to turn to online judging and other irregular formats. Thanks to the efforts of people involved in book design competitions around the world, however, the latest "Best Book Design from all over the World" competition saw participants and submissions from around 30 countries, on par with most years. Each of these countries devised creative approaches to judging and publicity. For example, novel approaches were employed to overcome the difficulties faced in publicizing the award-winning works, such as making the content more readily available online and distributing handouts that included all submitted works as well as award-winning ones.

This exhibition, too, resorted to unorthodox exhibit methods to prevent the spread of coronavirus infections, and we hope that you will enjoy the wonderful book designs selected over this past year.

Lastly, we would like to take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude to the competition organizers and everyone else who helped us out.