Hebrew Letterform research

-

Here is some research that has given me inspiration within my journey. I wanted to find old graphic design representations of Hebrew letterforms that would give me a different outlook within my current research practice and help contextualise my journey further. 

I am a big believer in gaining inspiration from the past and a collector of all things ephemera, however, sometimes it is hard to find the right materials for your research so you just have to look further in a field at times. So, I decided to search via Instagram and lo and behold I came across the work of David Goldstein, a calligrapher and hand lettering artist who specialises in Hebrew writing and letterform creation. 


https://www.instagram.com/david__goldstein/



I was inspired by his work and letterform creation but, what I found most interesting was his separate Instagram page that is dedicated to old Hebrew books. This became an insightful discovery of mine as I got to see so many inspiring letterforms from the different designers who had created different book covers.


https://www.instagram.com/old_hebrew_bookcovers/


This got me thinking, if I am inspired by the past and have found it hard to collect old Hebrew letterform ephemera, maybe I should consider looking into book publishing design as my way to search for typography and see how letterforms have evolved in the Hebrew language. 

https://www.instagram.com/old_hebrew_bookcovers/

The image above shows a rare book cover, Fifty Years of the Yom Kippur War. The designer of the type is unknown but I feel that the overall design style is very much linked to Russian constructivism typography. There is a strong sense of geometric-driven letterforms, making this display type stand boldly within the page. 

https://www.instagram.com/old_hebrew_bookcovers/

The above image shows a rare book cover for International Women's Day, Issue of Aked, 1968, which was designed by Gad Osman. The different letterforms used within this design, Is a clear visual representation of what we can see today in contemporary design communication, from display type for posters to editorial work. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Proposal: a brief analysis

-
Image
My First Post Here is my first official post to start this module off. I decided it would be a good practice of mine to first analyse the module brief. This is something that I have adopted within my own methodology in tackling a set brief and within my journey of education. It was important to highlight key points within the brief that stood out to me so that I could explore further and understand fully. I wanted to cover all the bases within this brief so noting down key points that stood out to me was a great way to start my creative thinking. This allowed me to begin my underpinning of what I want to focus on within my MA and what I want to write about within the project proposal.  This is the start of my research journey which I am very much looking forward to exploring further within my own practice.   
Read more

Iterations through ideation

-
Image
  From what I had looked at from my initial research, I decided to begin by exploring by creating. Here are rough sketches of the Hebrew word YHWH (Yahweh) also known as Jehovah. I decided to use my sketchbook which had a grid system. This was to analyse each letter form within the grid and work out how many squares would make up each letter for the word YHWH. I decided to continue exploring this grid by sketching out different Hebrew lettering styles that I had come across from the research and current fonts that I have. I could identify that each letter type is clearly different in design style but still connotes a strong sense of geometric design. To help me identify each type design, I used different colours to help distinguish the differences in design structures that I could spot from each letter of each different font. I used this to then recreate my own vectored font which is presented in blue.  The type that I had created seen here in blue, shares familiarities with M...
Read more

Work in Progress Showcase

-
Image
I was fortunate enough to be able to showcase my current work in progress alongside my other peers, with whom we shared our major projects. This was a great interim period to reflect upon my current journey by contextualising my research and communicating this in a professional setting.  The image shows the event WiP promo poster The idea was for myself and my peers to create our very own logotype that reflects our major projects without giving too much context away. This was a set task by our lecturer Dan who advised us that we try to generate our own imagery to reflect our projects. As well as contributing to this promo poster, I also wanted to create promo posters for myself that will be on display at the show. This is so that it would add context to my project and the prototypes that I wanted to showcase.  Images show photos taken from my promo posters Images show photos taken from my promo posters
Read more