Style combination · Contrasts
Bezalel School × Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
In the same decade Turkey replaced the Arabic script with Latin letters, while Bezalel made the revived Hebrew script its chief ornament; set them side by side to show two national answers to script.
Mix them and make something Bezalel School Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Bezalel School Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
- Type from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
- Colour from Bezalel School
- Form from Bezalel School
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Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design avoids abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Bezalel School
- Surface from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
Tomorrow
Bungee Shade, standing in for Shaded and extruded display letters and giant numerals (Milli Piyango '7', İş Bankası '12', Köy Halk Kıraatı)
Text · Bezalel School
The house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E. M. Lilien and given its definitive form by Ze'ev Raban. It joined Jugendstil and Symbolism to Persian, Syrian and Islamic ornament, Yemenite silverwork and ancient Jewish coins to make a Jewish national art: biblical and Zionist scenes in symmetrical, ornament-packed frames, hand-drawn Hebrew letters as decoration, and jewel colours heightened with gold, on books, posters, carpets, metalwork and tiles until the school closed in 1929 (its designs lingered on objects into the 1950s).
Jost; Bezalel School used Bezalel workshop Hebrew display lettering, which combined Arabic-script forms with German Jugendstil writing and Ze'ev Raban's hand-drawn Hebrew letters, rendered in gold at the centre of an illustrated page
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Bezalel School, with a counter-accent from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Bezalel School Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
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#f0e4c6ground · 36% -
#1d4e89ink · 14% -
#c9a03aaccent · 18% -
#cf1f2eaccent · 14% -
#2f8a8caccent · 10% -
#4f5d2faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f0e4c6;
--ink: #1d4e89;
--accent-1: #c9a03a;
--accent-2: #cf1f2e;
--accent-3: #2f8a8c;
--accent-4: #4f5d2f;
--font-display: "Bungee Shade", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Bezalel School: Bezalel works quote Hebrew scripture and decorate ritual objects: do not crop, distort, mirror or print biblical verses, and above all the names of God, on throwaway items (such pages are customarily buried rather than discarded), and have any Hebrew read by a fluent reader. The style's figures cast Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews, who modelled for its students and worked as its silversmiths and stone carvers, as picturesque biblical types, and its programme was Zionist in Ottoman and Mandate Palestine; credit the artisans, avoid exoticising living communities, and do not present it as a neutral 'Holy Land' or regional style. It also built a Jewish national art in part from Arab and Islamic sources (Persian and Syrian metalwork, Damascene inlay, Moorish pattern, and Hebrew lettering that drew on Arabic script) in a land it shared with Palestinian Arabs, whom, like Yemenite Jews, its artists took as models for biblical figures: name those sources rather than presenting the motifs as purely Jewish, and treat pieces such as 'Come to Palestine' and the Zionist insignia as political documents, not neutral travel imagery.
Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Atatürk's likeness, the Turkish flag and the star and crescent are living national symbols, and Turkey's Law No. 5816 (1951) criminalises insulting Atatürk's memory, so do not caricature, distort or trivialise them when borrowing this style. Much of this imagery was produced for a one-party state and its campaigns, and Kemalist iconography (the unveiled "modern" woman, the six arrows, Atatürk portraits) is still politically charged in Turkey, read differently by secularists, religious conservatives and minorities whom the nation-building imagery left out. Do not present the regime's modernising narrative as neutral, and do not reuse party emblems as decoration.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Bezalel School
- Vienna Secession Contrasts · Both put pictures inside symmetrical ornamental frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while Bezalel filled it with Middle Eastern filigree, carpet and metalwork motifs.
- Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art Pairs well · Both built a graphic language for a people's cultural renewal from ancestral ornament and biblical subjects in the 1920s; combine Bezalel's gilded frames with Aaron Douglas's flat silhouettes.
- Die Neue Typographie Contrasts · While Bezalel was gilding hand-drawn Hebrew letters inside ornamental frames, German modernists stripped ornament for sans-serif type and asymmetric layout; the two mark the poles of 1920s print.
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Pairs well · Bezalel took Moorish and Islamic geometric pattern for its borders and filigree; pair the two for frames whose star tilings and strapwork hold a figurative centre.
- Hebrew Poster Lettering & Early Israeli State Design Contrasts · The Jerusalem national art that came before it used the same menorah, ancient coins and hand-drawn Hebrew, but packed them into gilded, ornamental, biblical frames; the Tel Aviv studios reduced them to a single emblem on flat colour, and the emblem committee of 1949 deliberately left out overtly religious symbols.
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering Pairs well · Another national illumination of the 1900s–1920s, with hand-drawn national letters, jewel colours and gold inside heavy symmetrical frames; compare how each built a national art from ancient ornament.
- Kultur-Lige & Yiddish Avant-Garde Book Design Contrasts · Two Jewish national arts of the same years with hand-drawn Hebrew letters: Bezalel's Zionist, biblical pictures in gilded symmetrical frames in Jerusalem, and the Kultur-Lige's secular Yiddish children's books in faceted avant-garde planes in Kyiv; never merge them into one 'Jewish style'.
- Mir iskusstva Book Art Pairs well · In the same years both used Art Nouveau's ornamental frame to build a national book art from older ornament; set Bilibin's folk borders beside Raban's filigree frames to compare two revivals, or combine their framed, lettered pages.
With Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design
- WPA Silkscreen Posters Pairs well · Both are 1930s state-backed poster programmes for public institutions and tourism; combine WPA silkscreen flatness with Görey's modelled figures for civic campaigns.
- Urdu Katib Lithography Contrasts · Urdu print kept hand-written Arabic-script lithography for another century, while Turkey abolished Arabic letters in 1928; set the two side by side to show two answers to modern print.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Contrasts · Turkey replaced Arabic letters with Latin in 1928, and Emin Barın carried calligraphic habits into the new script; contemporary dual-script type design keeps both scripts and matches them as equals. Compare the two to show replacement against coexistence.
- Die Neue Typographie Contrasts · In the same years German modernists replaced illustration with sans-serif type and photography; Turkish Republican graphics kept Munich's pictorial poster and hand-drawn letters.
- Egyptian Painted Film Poster Pairs well · Görey was born in Cairo and worked for Egyptian clients; Cairo's painted lithographic posters share his modelled faces and hand-lettered titles, in Arabic rather than Latin script.
- Mongol Bichig Calligraphy & Ugalz Ornament Contrasts · Both make the state's alphabet part of its official graphics, by opposite moves: Turkish Republican posters hand-letter the new Latin alphabet at display size to promote it, while Mongolia sets its revived old script beside Cyrillic on seals, signboards and letterheads as a national mark.
- Yeşilçam Film Poster (Turkish Hand-Painted Afiş) Pairs well · Both use hand-drawn Latin Turkish lettering; Republican graphics are calm and official, the film poster is crowded and emotional.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Contrasts · The end of the sultanate in 1922 retired the tughra (its last on stamps that year), and the Republic replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet in 1928; its hand-lettered Latin posters are the deliberate opposite of the chancery's sultanic calligraphy.
All 12 combinations with Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design