“Yoel Geva” is one of the two leading players in teaching high-school math in Israel, and a household name. Many of us have spent some portion of our teenage years with his books in our backpacks. More than ten years have passed since the last time the Yoel Geva’s book covers received some kind of a facelift, so we were happy for the rare opportunity to make a change in this field.
The main challenge was to create a system that clearly and easily communicates an abstract subject like math – without resolving to illustrative solutions of symbols and icons, emphasis on “clearly communicating” – this is not an elitist design for an art gallery, it’s a textbook for high school students from all over the country.
Another challenge was creating a set of designs that are memorable on the one hand, without being overly dominant on the other – the students and teachers will encounter this cover repeatedly during the semester, and “excessive design” may also be over-bearing.
The solution was to return to basics, that is – the most basic forms are exactly the ones to survive over time. We created a contemporary take on mid-20th century modernist graphic designת, in the form of a series of colorful shapes (a mathematical series – if you will) each variation marks the student’s grade, and the number of units for final exams that they are studying – direct, communicative, and memorable.
The main challenge was to create a system that clearly and easily communicates an abstract subject like math
The solution was to return to basics, that is – the most basic forms are exactly the ones to survive over time.
