Typo mythology: How type and mankind were created

It all began when my eye caught a small figurine my wife bought from an Ethiopian woman. The figurine looked like a woman holding a child. It immediately reminded me of African ritual idols...this sparked my imagination.


I dreamt I was a typo-anthropologist who one day discovers a faded illustration of an interesting statue in an old encyclopedia. The statue looked like a strange synthesis of a human body and what looked like parts of type forms.


Apparently this was an illustration of a shamanistic ritual idol from equatorial Africa, which arrived in the west with a group of slaves in the beginning of the 19th. century.


I decided to go to Africa to seek out the origins of that ritual idol I found in the encyclopedia. In Africa I encountered, with the aid of local guides, an ancient isolated tribe which I was the first western person to visit. I was served a festive meal and invited to sit beside the tribal chief. The chief treated me to a tobacco pipe mixed with a local opiate and then while his hands gesticulated wildly and with the assistance of an interpreter, he proceeded to tell me a story...


"Thousands of years ago, the ancient ancestors of this tribe fell from the great heavens above the wild jungle. They fell straight to the earth..These were giants, the sons of gods and they had heads formed like letters. Thus they thrived with no worries upon the earth, subsisting on wild berries and drinking the water from the river...


"...One day some of them did not follow the orders of the great god which created them. His response was decisive and fierce. One by one he lopped their heads off with a heavy machete, separating the letter-head from their torso. And so the story goes this is how humans were created and their means of communication - language and type."


The chief ceased to speak. He pulled out a small idol from his lion-skin pouch, identical to the one I saw in the encyclopedia! He added that since those ancient times the tribal people pray to these idols so that they may be blessed with wisdom and knowledge and also to express gratitude for being their descendents. He gave me his blessing and awarded me the idol as a gift and symbol of our new friendship.

© Oded Ezer Typography. Created, written and designed by Oded Ezer. Story illustrations and translation by Yasha Rozov. Figurines illustration by Yifat Yairi. Assisted by Ruth Pikado. Figurine photographs by Idan Gil. Oded's portrait as a typo-anthropologist by Ruthie Ezer

The story of the Tipografya poster

It all started in 2003, when I was asked by my mother, whose a painter, to design a logo for her. I have used a very popular Hebrew typeface called Frank-Rühl, as a starting point, and cut the lower part of the letters. The result, although very minimal, was surprisingly readable.


I then thought about the possibility to replace the removed lower parts with what looks like antennas. The result was the a poster, showing the Hebrew word for Typography, that I have designed specially for a competition in china, whose theme was, well, “Typography”.


The strange thing was, that this piece, with it’s antenna elements, did not even pass the first judging session of the competition. Luckily, later on it became one of my most known pieces, and also my studio’s logo.

The Plastica Manifesto

I have published this short manifesto, addressed to 21st century's Hebrew Type Designers (a.k.a "The Plastica Manifesto") back in 2000, in the form of a poster. The words were printed in a very small size, next to "giant" 3D letters, standing on their own feet (Kisho Kurokawa, the famous Japanese architect who died in 2007, commented about these letters in 2001: "These could be described as letters turning into insects. Witty, and powerful enough to give viewers many kinds of thoughts such as tribunal, historical, cultural and the meanings of the letter itself...")


So, here it is, almost 10 years after it's creation and publication, freely translated from Hebrew:
"Contemporary Hebrew type design is being influenced by two sources:
By the traditional Hebrew letter-forms throughout the history, and by Latin typefaces. Why not add more sources of inspiration..?
Using the principles of other fields (e.g. biology, architecture, psychology etc.) in the typographic design - will produce new, outstanding creations, in this discipline"

May 2009: The Typographer‘s Guide to the Galaxy

This is so, so exciting. Gestalten's book about my work is in stores around the world now. Here are some sample spreads from it. All the credit and thanks go to Gestalten.

1996, the year of dimensional typography

I was a 3rd year student when a friend of mine brought me a modest looking pamphlet - J. Abbott Miller's Dimensional Typography: Words in Space as a present, and it blew my mind completely. That was 1996.


This pamphlet assembled simple, exciting 3D typographic experiments in space and time. I had never seen anything like this before. Miller used 'product design' methods on letters in times when the whole 3D programming was still at the beginning. The book showed letters rotating in a computer program and it looked like some kind of strange typo objects.


My head started to run very quickly. It took me two more years to understand what I needed to do: to devote at least half of my time for experiments and to see how typography can benefit from technology.

Chocolate, nostalgia and a slanted crown

Some had asked me over the years about the little symbol with the slanted crown, appearing on some of my experimental (non commercial) posters. Well, there is a nice little story behind it.


I was born and raised in a city called Ramat Gan, very near Tel Aviv. Ramat Gan was known for more then 70 years as the home of the 'Elite' brand, a famous local chocolate and coffee manufacturer; and if you were to grow up in there in the 70's, you couldn't escape from the heavy chocolate smell that laid like a cloud on the city.

Austrian-Jewish-Israeli graphic artist Franz Krausz (1905-1998) was a pioneer in his field and one of the best that ever worked in my country, and, among many other legendary works, he created in 1933 a symbol for 'Elite'.
Although the original logo that Krausz designed was already replaced and abandoned in the late 60's, it was still curved in stone on the facade of the famous building (until 2007, when it was destroyed by a new landlord), and it became, for me, an icon representing sweetness, sunny afternoons and childhood nostalgia.


So, when thinking about an appropriate personal logo for my experimental activities back in 2000, it was only natural for me to make a fun revival of this neglected symbol that, in a wonderful coincidence, carries a monogram of my own name - the Hebrew letter 'Ayin', or 'ע' for my first name - together with the Latin letter 'E', for my last name!
...and the slanted crown? Well, this is another story.

Early influences: The (incomplete) list

One of my favorite questions to my students is: "Who is your design hero?". Same as "How did you meet your lover" stories, I'm always fascinated to hear the answer, giving me the chance to learn not only about the person that speaks to me, but also something about the time and cultural context we live in.

If we had met in the early 1990's, short time before I begun my graphic design studies at the Bezalel academy in Jerusalem, I would probably give you the following list of designers that were, each one in a different way, a reason for me to become a future design professional; And although my taste in design has changed since then, I thought it would be just fair to pay them a homage for inspiring me to become a designer.

So - here it is - the (incomplete) list of the ten designers/artists and their works, that were (part of) the reason why I went to study graphic design, back in 1994:

John Heartfield
Gert Dumbar
Takenobu Igarashi
Alain Le Quernec
Barbara Kruger
David Tartakover
Klaus Staeck
Neville Brody
Philippe Apeloig
Michal Batory