I’ve just realised that it’s not very often that we’ve featured a graffiti artist in our Designer Desire series. As luck would have it, I’m very familiar with – if not the work itself, then – some of the locations of work by Oskar with a K.
In a past life, I worked in a few different arts organisations in Manchester city centre, one of which was directly opposite the Ritz where his Ooh Child work is situated. At a later date, I worked in the city’s Northern Quarter, and I walked past the former public toilet where his Hello work now lives on a twice-daily basis.
I would describe my work as graphic design unhindered by scale. I love working in public space, engaging fully with the environment I’m in and contributing to a world in which art and design is implicit to our cityscapes.
Born in Romania, (1921-2010) Zvi Narkiss was an award winning graphic designer and topographer.
He emigrated to Palestine at the age of 23, settling in Jerusalem. There, he attended painting classes with Jakob Steinhardt and Mordecai Ardon. He progressed on to study graphic design at The New Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He was so considered so talented, he bypassed the first academic year. The following year, he was invited to join the graphics department at the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund). Between 1950 and 1955 he was the chief graphic designer of the IDF’s training aids unit and served as head of the manuals’ design unit of the Israeli Air Force.
In 1955, he founded his own graphic design & typography studio where, for half a century, he designed books, exhibitions, stamps, banknotes, coins, advertising posters and logos. Amongst his many projects he designed two biblical books – the Horev Bible and the Hebrew University Bible – Jerusalem Crown for which he created a special typeface. He designed Israel’s very first tourism poster (included in the montage above), the IDF pavilion at the First Decade Exhibition (1958), the Victory Medal (1967), the Peace Medal (1977) and banknotes for the national bank of Israel.
Of all the design genres he practised, his real speciality was type design (fonts). He was the most prolific designer of Hebrew types during the 20th century; throughout his career, he designed a total of 14 typeface sets. Narkis, the book types he created that bear his name (Narkiss, Narkis Block, New Narkis, Narkis Tam and Narkisim), are the most popular and commonly in use in Israel. All in all, he designed five of the ten most frequently used typefaces in Israel.
In 2006, he won the EMET Prize in the design category for his Hebrew font designs.
At Narkiss’ funeral in 2010, the head of the department of visual communications department at his alma mater eulogised that, although the population at large don’t know the name Zvi Narkiss:
…most of us ‘consume’ Narkis’ work on a daily basis, at nearly every moment… Zvi’s letters, the Hebrew letters Zvi designed over many years during his long career, appear and are in use everywhere. Nearly any material printed in Hebrew bears at least one of the typefaces Narkis designed, be it a best-selling novel, a daily newspaper, packaging for cheese, the opening of a television program, a road sign or paper currency. Narkis’ work is outstanding and very unusual. He nurtured and enriched the appearance of the Hebrew letter in a variety of new shapes – Zvi’s work has become the standard relative to which everything is designed.
Bruno Munari (1907-1998) is probably as close as you’d get to an all-encompassing creative. Born in Milan, he was a graphic designer, industrial & product designer, children’s toy designer, painter, sculptor, film-maker, book illustrator & author and educator.
In the 30s & 40s, he worked as art director on Tempo Magazine, Grazia and for a short while, Domus. He also later became a consultant on the fledgling Epoca Magazine. In 1948, he was one of the founder members of Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC), the Italian concrete art movement.
He designed for many of the top Italian design houses including Danese Milano, Olivetti, Pirelli, Robots and Zanotta. For Danese, he created the iconic Falkland suspension lamp and Cubo ashtray (both shown in the montage above). For Zanotta, he created the whimsical Singer chair – described by the company as a, “Chair for very brief visits”.
There are many books by and about Munari available on Abe Books and Amazon.
Art shall not be separated from life: things that are good to look at, and bad to be used, should not exist. Bruno Munari, 1966
New York city born Eric Drooker (b. 1958) is a magazine illustrator, graphic novelist, animator and painter.
In 1994, he won the American Book Award for his first graphic novel, Flood! A Novel in Pictures (cover artwork, bottom left in the montage above). His second, Blood Song is soon to be released as a feature film.
He has designed dozens of covers for the New Yorker magazine. He collaborated with Allen Ginsberg on both Illuminated Poems and Howl: A Graphic Novel.
Find his graphic novels, books of postcards and other books he’s illustrated on Amazon.
In the film below, Eric Drooker is interviewed about his friendship with Allen Ginsberg and designing the animation for Howl starring James Franco.
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