Hebrew Typography

Hebrew Typography

Category Archives: modern

Hebrew Typography:
Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 3

12 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by Hebrew Typography in calligraphy, modern

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Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 3

Micha Ullman, one of Israel’s top sculptors, recipient of the Israel Prize and one of Yerachmiel Schechter’s students, writes in his memories “Perhaps I’ll start with how I became a sculptor. In ‘Bezalel’ we studied calligraphy with Yerachmiel Schechter who was an architect, calligraphy with a nib.  My final project was about Shabbat. He looked at my work and after few minutes said “very good”. I told him, wait a moment, I’m not completely satisfied with the letters. He replied, I wasn’t looking at the letters, I was looking at the spaces. It took me about seven years to understand this sentence until I became a sculptor…” (from the Adi foundation website)

Here, a calligraphy by Ulman the student (1961) and his autograph on the back side

(Courtesy of Schechter Archive, Emuna Collage, Jerusalem)

Hebrew Typography:
Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 2

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Hebrew Typography in calligraphy, modern

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Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 2

The Shadow  Clock, a calligraphy-illustration project by Eric Kolmanik, one of Yerachmiel Schechter’s talented students in the ‘new’ Bezalel. Around 1960.

Sketches of the design

(Courtesy of Schechter Archive, Emuna Collage, Jerusalem)

Hebrew Typography:
Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 1

04 Monday Jun 2012

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Calligraphy projects by students of Yerachmiel Schechter from “new” Bezalel, part 1

An exquisite glimpse into the treasure box of calligraphy projects from the late ’50s and the early ’60s created by students of the legendary teacher Yerachmiel Schechter, courtesy of the Schechter archives at Emuna college.
The first project is unsigned and not dated. The second project was created by the student Eliahu (Metuka) Schwartz who, after graduating from Bezalel and training at École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, would establish and head the department of graphic design at the academy of design and education, Wizo Haifa, for years to come.

Art critic Gideon Ofrat writes on his website: “….at the script department of ‘new’ Bezalel, Yerachmiel Schechter seeks the connection between the design of a letter to the instrument it was written with. After the period of writing letters in the style of the bible during Shatz’s Bezalel (Raban type for example), ‘new’ Bezalel searched for a more ‘scientific’ and functional approach to the question of designing a letter.”

Yerachmiel Schechter, who was head of the “new” Bezalel academy for two years (1955-1957), was known for his strict typographic design education. As an independent designer he created, among other things, letters for the sole use of the young El-Al company, as well as the logo of “Am oved” publishers.

New book:
Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by Hebrew Typography in calligraphy, contemporary, heritage, modern, print

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Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy

Izzy Pludwinksky is a calligrapher, artist, calligraphy teacher and a Sofer STaM located in Jerusalem. Recently, his book Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy was published (Toby Press). Complete with over 200 full-color illustrations and contributions from some of the world’s top Hebrew calligraphers, this is a beautiful and informative book.

Hebrew Typography:
Shenkar design archive & research center website is open for the public

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by Hebrew Typography in digital, heritage, modern

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Shenkar design archive & research center website is open for the public

Shenkar design archive & research center website opened for public viewing about three weeks ago, as reported by Samlil blog. The blog indicates that “There are 14,000 displayed items out of a total of 40,000 that were scanned, photographed and retouched by the staff of the center and are waiting for publication.”

The blog adds “Due to copyright constraints, the items could not be viewed in a magnified mode. The center holds the files in high quality, in hope that in the future these constraints will be removed (at least in part), so it will be able to achieve its goal and to allow designers and students to examine and analyze the items. More about the activities of the center and the possibility to donate items will be published soon.”

Hebrew Typography:
Yiddish Posters

04 Saturday Feb 2012

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Yiddish Posters

Design critic Steven Heller has recently posted some great examples of Yiddish theater posters he found in the NYPL Digital Gallery. More Yiddish posters can be found in The Center for Jewish History.

Hebrew Typography:
Guest writer Tsilli Pines on Ben Shahn’s Haggadah

12 Monday Dec 2011

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Guest writer Tsilli Pines on Ben Shahn’s Haggadah

Ben (Benjamin) Shahn is best known for his social realist paintings in the 1930′s and 40′s, but he also produced some of the most exciting contemporary Judaica in the United States.

In the 1950′s, he illustrated a book called The Alphabet of Creation, pictured below. (You can still buy a later edition of the book.) His lettering for the cover influenced my classic Hebrew alphabet poster (along with Lawrence Kushner’s Book of Letters); it also became his signature. A stamp of the miniature alphabet appears in the corner of many of his works after 1960. You can see it in red on the lower right corner of this ketubah he designed, which is now in the permanent collection of the New York Jewish Museum:

In the 60′s, he published Love and Joy About Letters, a book which features more of his hand lettering. His training in lithography and graphic design really shines through in his later works.

Interestingly, Shahn made many of the illustrations that would later appear in his Haggadah in the 1930′s. His watercolors were finally published in the 60′s, along with loads of gorgeous hand lettering and 10 drawings for the song Chad Gadya. His Haggadah is a personal volume, evoking his memories of Passover with his father.

Again, you can see his signature red chop on the lower right of the opening spread, below which he has the shehechiyanu:

Shahn’s hand lettered Hebrew contrasts nicely with the clean English typography:

The Hebrew titling gets a healthy amount of breathing room:

The 2 languages are set helpfully on opposing pages:

Chad Gadya gets generous real estate at the end of the Haggadah – 5 spreads for a short song. Here’s the first of them:

Shahn had so much lefty street cred that he was named checked by Woody Allen in Annie Hall (see the :45 mark). But his body of work is multi-dimensional, irreducible. He straddled commercial and fine art, and tackled a broad range of secular and religious subjects. It’s always interesting to see what an artist with such breadth creates as personal work.

Hebrew Typography:
Letters that make you smarter 1920

27 Sunday Nov 2011

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A beautiful set of Hebrew alpha-bet cuisenaire rods, one of the earlier examples of the Frank-Rühl letters (published by Rudolph Schick & Co., Belfast, Ireland around 1920).

Designed by Dr. Mojzis Woskin-Nahartabi – a mysterious character and a man of many skills. Woskin-Nahartabi was a Rabbi, a scientist, a Zionist, an orientalist, a theologian and a teacher of languages (he spoke fluent Hebrew, Aramaic, Sumerian and Arabic). During the second world war, he taught children Hebrew in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, until he was sent to Auschwitz – there he was murdered by the Nazis in 1944.

© Jewish Museum in Prague

Hebrew Typography:
“In honor of the famous genuine genius and sharp rabbi”, 1852

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by Hebrew Typography in calligraphy, modern

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This exceptional “Shiviti” sample, was painted in 1852 by Abraham Ben Zundel, who was an immigrant from the Greek island Corfu arriving to Moravia (a region in today’s Czech Republic).
It is characterized by it’s naïve Sephardi typographic style (unlike the acceptable Ashkenazi-style of that time that was common in that area), decorative additions (flowers, leaves, stars and even fish) and a composition derived from the Kabbalistic visual lexicon.

At the bottom, Ben Zundel encloses an inscription to the local Rabbi (who probably ordered the job), and spares no praise: “In honor of the famous genuine genius and sharp rabbi, teacher of the Torah to Israel, Moharar Avraham Neida… his light will shine as the sun in the east”.

© Jewish Museum in Prague

Hebrew Typography:
Arabesques and typographic patterns

01 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by Hebrew Typography in contemporary, modern

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One of the most famous students in “old” Bezalel was type artist Yaakov Stark, who emigrated to Israel in 1905 and joined the institute a year later as one of it’s first ten students.

the student Yaakov Stark in action, 1906

Stark used the Hebrew letter as a decorative motif, mainly for decorative wall hangings patterns and for books. Stark’s design was influenced by the Islamic arabesque as well as the European typography of the beginning of the century, in the style of Art Nouveau.

In his monograms, it was sometimes difficult to detect the exact letter on which the ornament was based on, though it was very clear it originated from the Hebrew alphabet. In later years, influenced by Bauhaus ideology, the stylized letters Stark was influenced by started disappearing, and instead simpler letters, more easy to read appeared.

examples of typographic decorative wall hangings patterns, Yaakov Stark, 1906

More than a century have past, and again at Bezalel Hebrew letters appear as a decorative motif. In a beautiful project within a typography class led by Avi Eisenstein, a fourth year student, Yael Segal presents typographic patterns based on individual letters from contemporary Hebrew fonts.

Yael Segal presents typographic patterns, 2011. Right: Prof. Eisenstein

“The project began out of respect for the Hebrew letter, it is in fact a visual research that includes over 500 examples”, says Yael. “I tried to display a different outlook of pattern making using the Hebrew letter, that loses its familiar sound and undertakes a new sound, a new look, a new form – and yet it remains strong.

from the project: A pattern based on 'Meoded Serif' typface

from the project book. Respect for the Hebrew letter

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Hebrew Typography contains short articles, links and posts that are related to traditional and contemporary Hebrew typography and type design.

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CONTRIBUTORS:

Oded Ezer / Editor

Graphic and type designer, founder of HebrewTypography.com Type Foundry
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Prof. Shimon Sandhaus / Guest writer

Graphic designer and design educator

Ada Rothenberg / Guest writer

Graphic designer and writer

Tsilli Pines / Guest writer

Graphic designer and writer

Eliahu Misgav / Guest writer

Calligrapher and Graphic designer

Anat Shinar / translator

Graphic designer

Fonts in action

פונט אלכימאי

פונט מגדל

פונט מעודד-פשוט צר

פונט מעודד-פשוט צר

פונט מעודד-פשוט צר

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פונט עזר בלוק

פונט מעודד פשוט

פונט מעודד פשוט

פונט מעודד פשוט

פונט רץ

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פונט תאגיד

פונט רץ בגרסא לאינטרנט

פונט רץ בגרסא לאינטרנט

פונט מעודד סריף

פונט אלכימאי

Recommended Hebrew typography books

  • New American Haggadah New American Haggadah
  • Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy
  • The Book of Hebrew Script The Book of Hebrew Script
  • The Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy The Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy
  • The Work of Ismar David The Work of Ismar David
  • Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts

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