The section By The Book: Design To Tell, invites book designers to share their process of creating art books and catalogs. Each designer invites the next colleague to the magazine.
Photo: Julia Hasting.
Who are you?
My name is Kobi Benezri. I am a graphic designer living and working in Zurich, Switzerland. I design mainly books in the fields of art, design, architecture, and photography, for international publishers, museums, galleries, and artists. I was born in Jerusalem and graduated from Bezalel. I am a father of two. Owner of Kobi Benezri Studio.
How did you get into the world of design, specifically book design?
As a kid, I would draw all day long. Took art classes in the Israel Museum youth wing for years. As a teenager, I concentrated on playing music, and for years I was sure that I would study music, although when it came time to decide, I had to come to terms that I wasn’t good enough, so I went back to my original “occupation.” For some reason, typography always interested me, and when I arrived at Bezalel, it was clear I would be heading in the direction of print and typography. During the first years, I felt I was being given very high-quality tools by the lecturers in typography (Adi Stern, Avi Eisenstein, Sheri Arnon).
At the same time, my attitude towards art was greatly influenced by courses I took with Moti Mizrahi and Hila Lulu Lin. In my third year of study, I went on a student exchange at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. During that semester, I took a Publication Design course that made a deep impression on me and continues to influence my approach to book design.
Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2024
What book design project challenged you most and why?
The book Atlas of Furniture Design for the Vitra Design Museum was not a simple project. It started as a competition with four other designers for the project. The book covers over 200 years of furniture design from the 18th century to the present. The brief included a scope of elements: page layouts of historical texts, presentation of objects from the Vitra collection with different levels of detail, huge indexes, a wide range of data and statistics on art and design styles, movements, and techniques, that was to be translated into infographics. The challenge was to offer a concept that offers a holistic approach to organizing such a broad array. In a way I had to put on the hat of an editor before I even started thinking about the visual side. The proposal I submitted was a system that simplifies the navigation of this enormous book (1,024 pages) in an abstract way that also allows use of the visual elements appearing in different configurations in each part of the book. My proposal won and then began a nearly seven-year process until the book was completed.
Vitra Design Museum, Germany.
A project that led you to unexpected places.
The book I designed for Chef René Redzepi of the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen ended up going to unexpected places. Here too there was no line between a designer and an editor, and the unusual structure I proposed was what gave the book its unique tone. But I think that the book Ametria that I designed for the Deste Art Foundation in Athens ended up with quite surprising results. Here, it was the combination of an exhibition with a unique concept, and the presentation of the content in an uncommon fashion, as well as some experiments with the printer.
The book is an exhibition catalog that includes works from the Deste collection—all contemporary art—paired with ancient objects from the collections of the Benaki Museum in Athens, which is predominantly Hellenistic art. The exhibition blurred the line between ancient and contemporary and was designed like a kind of dark maze the visitor was practically beckoned to get lost in. The works were mounted on black display stands that were lit from below. The book is actually a black object that is “lit” from below with the works presented in a way that mimics wandering through the exhibition.
Dream book: an object that can be leafed through that you haven’t designed yet and would really like to.
I never thought about that. Although I have always fantasized on creating a book with my content that is more like an experiment in print. A direct collaboration with the machine operator—some sort of trial and error with different materials where in a way the medium becomes the content. But maybe that’s asking too much.
An inspiring book—from your bookshelf?
When I was living in New York, I found a book on the street that had a black leather hardcover with nothing on it. I opened it and on the inside cover was a manufacturer’s label—not a publisher, but a manufacturer of sketchbooks and binders. I kept flipping and saw all kinds of drawings and pictures that seemed taped on top of pages that themselves seemed glued to each other creating gatefolds.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at, until I recognized a famous work by Marcel Duchamp called Étant donnés and realized that I was actually flipping through a facsimile of his instruction manual for the work, with all his sketches, test shots and notes. It was published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art where the work was shown in the 1980s. The production was so convincing that it just blew me away.
Another beloved printed item that I have on my shelf is a British phone book called Kelly's Directory of Hastings County in England, that my wife received as a gift from the designer Alan Fletcher who, among other things, founded Pentagram. The book, a small, hardcover format, is a kind of local yellow pages, and it is covered with typographic ads, and when I say covered, I mean the front, back, spine, inside, and all sides (including the page edges). It’s a feast of typography. There is not a single real estate on that book that isn’t covered with type.
This object ended up being the inspiration for the book I designed called Where Chefs Eat. The brief from the publisher included a list, which was a kind of sales pitch I was to refer to when designing the book in order to understand the target audience. I decided to take the list as a whole and just bombard the book with typography like in Kelly’s Directory. This was one of my favorite projects: 700-plus pages of typography and maps in just one ink.
Book by Julia Hasting.
A recommendation for a book that you didn’t design?
Pretty much any book by Bruno Munari. More recently, the book Daydream by Jumping He or Bruce Nauman: The True Artist was designed by Julia Hasting (full disclosure: she’s my wife).
What advice would you give to an artist at the beginning of the process of creating a book?
To an artist beginning the process of creating a book, I would recommend finding a designer they can trust to develop with them a vibrant, open-minded dialogue about the art and the design process. I would recommend not treating the book only as a tool for presenting the art, but as an object that is actually a reflection of the content.
How do you choose or create a font or font family for a book (leafing) project?
I often develop fonts for specific projects, without any intention of making them commercial. In my opinion, it’s like creating a tool for myself that I am comfortable working with. It’s not a process that I’m necessarily committed to and in most of my projects I use existing fonts—I’m usually drawn to things that are modest and unassuming. There’s a Garamond that I have developed for myself over the years and with each print project, I make some improvements to it and polish it. Although there are dozens of Garamonds out there, I was looking to create a version with a very specific proportion that suits me.
How do you approach selecting materials for an artist's book or other leafed objects?
I try to draw inspiration from the content, to find a material, technique, or typographic solution that tells the reader who and what the artist featured in the book is about. I treat every part of the book (format, cover, spine, endpapers, headbands, etc.) not as generic stock, but as an inherent detail for representing the interior on the exterior. Sometimes it could be a small, marginal element that the reader spots by chance. I have been lucky to collaborate with a wonderful production woman who knows how to produce almost anything, no matter how complicated or excessive. I work with European and Japanese paper manufacturers, which gives me quite a wide range of materials.
A designer / store / publisher abroad that we can’t miss!
The stores where I find the most inspiration are usually second-hand bookstores. In Europe, there are many markets and small and large stores of this type. I find all kinds of old and forgotten printing and binding techniques there that can be revived with modern technology. I like this combination, not because it’s a celebration of the old as opposed to the new, but because there used to be ways of thinking and necessities that no longer exist for which over the years more usable and efficient alternatives have been found. Such things can become tools in service of the content.
An interesting project you are currently working on.
I am currently working on a book about the Katsura imperial villa in Kyoto, and a series on Contemporary Masters.
Who should we invite to By The Book section?
Avihai Mizrahi!
Currently based in Zürich, Switzerland, Kobi Benezri studied Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 2004 he became the Art Director of I.D. magazine. During his work at I.D. he has redesigned the magazine. In 2006 he founded his own practice, Kobi Benezri Studio in New York, focusing on books, editorial, type, corporate, and web design. He designed books for the Vitra Design Museum, the Whitney Museum for American Art, Schaulager Museum, Phaidon Press, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, Steidl Verlag, Diogenes Verlag, and the DESTE Foundation. His fonts are released by Lineto and are in use worldwide.
