A note to the reader
We publish so that
a place is remembered
the way it was seen.
Markets are lived, argued over and rebuilt every day. Very little of that daily record survives. Reports go out of date. Websites are replaced. Institutions change hands.
A place, once, was here. These are the people who built it. These are the industries that carried it. This is the state of things in the year it went to press.
We publish for the reader who arrives ten years after the fact and wants to understand what stood, and who stood behind it. Each edition is a portrait of a market at a moment in time, edited to be read now and to be trusted later.
A single catalogue,
many markets.
Best of Series is a global publishing series. Each edition documents a city, a country or an industry. The book is researched with the leaders, editors and enterprises who make that market run, and produced to the same editorial standard, wherever it is set.
A directory.
A guidebook.
A brochure.
It is an edition of record. Bound, dated and kept.
Written with the market.
Edited against it.
Four principles govern every edition, in every country.
- 01
A single edition per market at a time.
Only one edition per city, country or industry is in production at any moment. Each is treated as a definitive record for that volume year.
- 02
A publishing partner on the ground.
One partner is appointed in each market. They are chosen for editorial judgement, standing and the ability to reach the people the edition must include.
- 03
Original reporting and photography.
The material is commissioned, not licensed. Portraits are made for the volume. Interviews are conducted for it. The book is first-hand.
- 04
Printed to be kept.
Every edition is designed, typeset and printed to a standard that assumes the volume will remain on a shelf and be consulted long after the year on its spine.
A publishing history,
quietly kept.
The bureau has published continuously since 2003. What follows is a note on the evolution of the catalogue, not a record of company events.
- 2003
The first edition is published. The method is set: local partner, editorial standard, permanent record.
- 2007
The catalogue reaches its first ten countries. The series expands beyond a single region.
- 2011
The industry editions begin. A market can now be documented by sector as well as by place.
- 2015
The Atlas is organised into six regions. The catalogue is read as a whole for the first time.
- 2020
Editions are opened in digital form. The physical volume remains the edition of record.
- 2024
The series passes 180 published editions in more than fifty markets.
Each edition belongs
to the whole.
A single volume is a portrait of one market. Read alongside the catalogue, it becomes something more: a coordinate in a larger reading of the world.
- Africa
- Middle East
- Europe
- Asia
- Americas
- Oceania
Every edition begins with a partner who can stand for the market.
The bureau publishes in a country or industry only when the right partner is in place. The bureau contributes editorial method, design, production and the catalogue. The partner contributes local knowledge, the network required to convene the volume, and the standing to represent the market.
More markets. The same standard.
The record continues.
New editions are in preparation in cities, countries and industries across the six regions. Each is being made the way the bureau has always made them, with a partner in the market and an editor at the desk. What comes next is simply the next volume.
— Best of Series