Striking design work by the trailblazers of modern Swiss design.

It’s been barely four years since Büro Destruct, trailblazers of modern Swiss design, published their first ever collection of works at Gestalten. Best-known and -loved for their ostensibly digital design solutions with a generous touch of craftsmanship, relaxed cleverness and humour, this Bern-based design collective has since realised a multitude of fascinating projects for clients of all shapes and sizes – and assembled the resulting highlights in this book. Büro Destruct II follows its predecessor in layout, structure and the healthy mix of commissioned and free designs. In content, too, the volume shows a consistent continuation, development and refinement of the distinctive Büro Destruct style, providing an in-depth peek at the collective’s experiments, work methods and background through a number of case studies. In addition, internal projects like Typedifferent, the Los Logos website, Büro Discotec, Büro Discount and Rainbow are exhaustively documented.

With their “instinctive graphics” Büro Destruct prove that it’s possible to become both more complex and focused, older and fresher, wiser and punkier at the same time. Still inspired by literally everything that surrounds them, they have retained their cheeky freedom to (every once and again) dabble in a little cultivated nonsense.

Text: Gestalten