Anna Monika Jost's work can be found in the areas of commercial media, packaging, publications, magazines, trade fair appearances, and visual identities, ranging from Swiss style to postmodernism. They are dominated by color and stylistic openness. Another characteristic of her work is the use of different font styles, from modern to classic.

Her work also demonstrates her ability to adapt to different cultural and linguistic contexts, through which she has been successful in both commercial advertising and cultural institutions across three language areas.

Jost was born in 1944 in Klosters, Switzerland, and moved to Zurich in 1960 to attend a preliminary course at the Kunstgewerbeschule. There, she learned drawing, modeling, lettering, color theory, and woodworking from Karl Schmid. She initially attended a textile class but, on the recommendation of Gottfried Honegger, changed her mind and began an apprenticeship as a scientific draughtswoman at the Zoological Museum of the University of Zurich in 1961. At the same time, she attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule and studied typography and color theory.

During this time, she lived with Honegger's daughter, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who completed the same apprenticeship. The connection to the Honegger-Lavater family opened the door to concrete art for Jost.

In 1965, she moved to Milan, where she quickly found work at Olivetti and, under art director Walter Ballmer, designed various advertising materials and contributed to trade fair stands and stores. In 1967, she moved back to Zurich. At the Heinrich Lorch advertising agency, she designed advertising material, logos, and stationery. In 1969, she first worked in the Basel studio of Jean Reiwald AG but moved to the Milan branch a year later. There, she worked under art director Armin Vogt for clients such as Fiat, Motta, and Baccarat.

In 1972, she finally moved to Paris and began working for the Prisunic department store chain. There, she controlled and supervised the realization of the new corporate identity designed by Tomás Maldonado. A year later, she took over the graphic design department at Design Programmes SA, Roger Tallon's company. She was responsible for the redesign of Laboratoires Goupi's pharmaceutical packaging, which was later realized through Massimo Vignelli's efforts. Together with Rudi Meyer and Peter Keller, she also worked on the corporate design for the French state railroads, SNCF.

In 1978, she took the leap into self-employment. Rolf Ibach, art director at the UNESCO publishing house, helped her by providing her with a workplace in his office and commissions to design the international magazines "Museum" and "ICOM News." This allowed Anna Monika Jost to specialize in multilingual editorial design and land important follow-up commissions. Her clients also included the French Ministry of Culture and UNESCO.

From 1993 to 2011, she designed the science magazine "Technè" for the Louvre’s "Centre national de recherche et de restauration des Musées de France" (CNRS).

In her Paris studio, she primarily developed corporate identities and the design of books and specialist journals. Through her work, she made an important contribution to the integration and further development of Swiss graphic design abroad.

In 2025, she was awarded the Swiss Grand Prix Design. (kl)