Oded Ezer: The Typographer’s Guide to the Galaxy book (via design:related)

“It took the Israeli-born filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal nine years to get her first animated feature made. Its title: “$9.99.” “And it’s coming out in 2009,” she said…”

Characters of Clay, Extremely Well Aged via NYTimes.com

Israel Postage Stamps: Arbor Day
(discovered via stampflickr)

I’m in awe of this beautiful collection that was just added to flickr. My mom’s collection is nice too, but not nearly as large.

Vintage Color & Design: Israeli Postage Stamps (via colourlovers)

I’ve always been a fan of the Colour Lovers site, so I found it extra exciting to see that they found my slow growing flickr collection of vintage stamps (all courtesy of my mother) and added color swatches for some of them.

Kafka on the Shore (via The Book Design Review)

mattmcinerney:

I really like the packaging for Shefa Young Wine. I love the drip shape cut out of the labels. Designed by Nine99Design.

“Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami last night accepted Israel’s prestigious literary award, the Jerusalem prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian groups…” (via guardian.co.uk)

The lettering style on this Israeli postage stamp from the 70s is very fun:

(via flickr)

Palestine Postage Stamp (via flickr)

For some time I’ve been meaning to get my mom’s postage stamp collection in order. Over the next year I’m going to attempt to scan all the stamps and share on flickr. I’ll try to add atleast one a day in groups by country…

I believe the stamp above is the oldest stamp in the collection so I’ve added this one first. Look out for many more stamps added in the weeks to come.

Israeli poster designer Dan Reisinger
(so happy to have discovered his work
via Dave @ Grain Edit)

While visiting the Bauhaus Architecture Center in Tel Aviv, I felt like a kid in a toy shop when scouring through their book shop. I came across a book titled, Hebrew Graphics, which was in conjunction with an earlier exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1999. What I believed I purchased was an overview of graphic design of Israel’s rich, but young past. But when I returned to home, I was astonished that the entire book was filled with the work of a team of revolutionary brothers in the area of branding a new country.

Brothers Gabriel and Maxim Shamir played an important role in the visual design of the state of Israel’s symbolic sphere, and where among the most conspicuous creators among the iconography representing the history of the country’s formative years. Their work was an integral part of the social apparatus aimed at rendering unity though identification, whether when it crystallized as an ideological appeal or when it served as marketing needs. Aside from being a part of an entire generation, the work of the Shamir Brothers undertook tasks of formalizing the symbols of Israeli sovereignty and independence - the State’s emblem, currency notes, medals and stamps, establishing recruitment myths and disseminating collective goals pertaining to the governmental practice, such as the call for inhabitants to move out of the city and into the country, accounting for the food rationing (tzena policy, the battle against the black market, and the like. —Batia Donner, guest curator for the Hebrew Graphics -Shamir Brothers Studio Exhibition

In 1935 the Shamir Brothers opened their studio on 84 Rothschild Blvd, Tel Aviv. (13 years prior to the establishment of the state of Israel). I’m fascinated with the idea of two brothers having such a long lasting impact for the branding of one country from its infancy to the modern day.

(I plan to research more on this subject and and elaborate on this entry in the future)