Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem was established in 1906 as a “study hall for the craft of arts”, and is the oldest and most prominent academy in Israel and one of the most important schools in its field all over the world.
This means that the greatest challenge in rebranding Bezalel is finding an appropriate expression for Bezalel’s iconic place in Israeli culture and history. The other big challenge was creating a brand that would be a strong and recognisable enough framework for a brand that produces a huge amount of content like Bezalel, and would create enough differentiation under one unified visual language.
Researching the fields in which Bezalel operates (academia, design and art) led us to the conclusion that these goals can be achieved by four tools; Distinct colours, rich use of typography, distinct font, and a flexible system of layouts. The entire language is based on strong, trilingual typography, using the trilingual font “Abraham”, which was designed at Bezalel as Daniel Grumer’s final project in order to display the languages in an equal, neutral and non-ornamental manner – in a way that both suits the academy’s values (locality, inclusiveness), and also meets the existing need to produce products in all three languages.
The typographic black and white of the visual language is disrupted by hints of phosphorescent gradients, which express the tension between old and the new, and between the institution’s being long-standing and historic, and innovative and groundbreaking at the same time. In the renewed version we created for Moses Lilien’s historical logo, the Bezalel seal was adapted and simplified, and the three languages - which were previously separated, were typographically interwoven in a way that preserves legibility in each of the languages, and expresses the way the academy sees concepts such as “locality” and being a Jerusalemite.
In the renewed version we created for Moses Lilien’s historical logo, the Bezalel seal was adapted and simplified, and the three languages
The typographic black and white of the visual language is disrupted by hints of phosphorescent gradients, which express the tension between old and the new
Researching the fields in which Bezalel operates (academia, design and art) led us to the conclusion that these goals can be achieved by four tools
the visual language is disrupted by hints of phosphorescent gradients, which express the tension between old and the new, and between the institution’s being long-standing and historic, and innovative and groundbreaking at the same time
