Unprecedented Achievement: All Edmond de Rothschild Award Winners Are Bezalel Alumni and Lecturers

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem congratulates Prof. Merav Salomon, Michal Sahar, Yoav Perry, Almog Sella and Itamar Toren (True Twins) who won the Edmond de Rothschild Award for Design for 2024, and Nawal Arafat who was awarded an honorable mention – all graduates and lecturers in the Department of Visual Communication.

The Edmond de Rothschild Design Award, established by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, is intended to promote and encourage excellence through public recognition of established designers with a high caliber portfolio of significant volume, to identify and support emerging designers, and to boost local interest in contemporary design, and enhance international exposure of Israeli design in particular. Establishing a prestigious award with an international presence and recognition, dedicated to contemporary Israeli design, will allow designers to be seen and heard beyond the professional and local community, with the aim of encouraging a variety of new voices and creative endeavor.

This year’s winners were selected from among 250 designers who submitted portfolios. All the winners  are excellent designers who offer diverse approaches and work to advance the field. Each presented a unique portfolio of uncompromising quality and originality. The four creators will receive a total cash prize of NIS 260,000. In addition, this year, an honorable mention and cash prize of NIS 10,000 will be awarded for activity that has a positive and significant impact on the local environment.

The Established Designer Award went to Prof. Merav Salomon and Michal Sahar, the Emerging Designer Award went to Yoav Perry and the duo Almog Sella and Itamar Toren (True Twins Studio), and the honorable mention went to Nawal Arafat for her continuous activity as a designer-activist working toward social change and improvement of the local environment.

Prof. Merav Salomon

Winner of the Edmond de Rothschild Award in the Established Designer Category

Prof. Merav Salomon is an illustrator and book artist, head of the Art and Design Teaching Center at Bezalel, a graduate and lecturer in illustration in the Department of Visual Communication and in the MA program in Visual Communication. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Salomon & Daughters Books, an independent publishing house dedicated to publishing visual books for adults. Salomon’s books and illustrations, as well as books she has edited, have won international and local awards.

Justification for the award: “The Edmond de Rothschild Award for Design is presented to Prof. Merav Salomon for a rich, fascinating and pioneering body of work in the field of illustration, and for continuous and groundbreaking work that has expanded the boundaries of the field of illustration in Israel and contributed to its cementing in the heart of contemporary culture. Merav Salomon’s body of work reflects a profound knowledge of art history and visual communication, printing techniques and illustration, which is expressed in her unique and layered work. Her steady presence for over three decades in the professional field, as a creator, lecturer and publisher, is characterized by generosity, professional curiosity and a radical approach to traditional crafts. Her extraordinary abilities to tell clear, accessible and poetic stories, which challenge the hierarchy between the written and the illustrated and also deeply assimilate their connection, have become a central working tool for her and for the entire field.”

Michal Sahar

Winner of the Edmond de Rothschild Award in the Established Designer Category

Michal Sahar is a designer and typographer in the field of art and culture, a graduate and senior lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication. She has designed and branded institutions such as Bezalel, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Petah Tikva Museum, and the Jaffa Port. She has designed catalogs and exhibitions for Israeli representatives at biennials in Israel and around the world in the fields of art, design, architecture and landscape architecture. She has designed catalogs for many Israeli artists, including Moshe Gershuni, Ido Bar-El, Gil Marco Shani, Yehudit Sasportas, Doron Rabina, Irit Hemmo, Yair Garbuz, Sigalit Landau and Dov Or Ner.

Justification for the award: “The Edmond de Rothschild Award for Design is presented to Michal Sahar for her monumental presence in the field of local design in general and in the field of typography in particular. Thanks to her extraordinary work in both scope and complexity, which combines development of typographic processes up to their practical application in image design, Michal Sahar lays the foundations on which the next generation of visual communication in Israel will build. In the multilingual environment we inhabit, there is a real need for fonts that will meet the current and changing needs. The fonts she has designed over the years have become the canon and are in use in every possible medium. In uncompromising, groundbreaking, thorough and meticulous work, Sahar has achieved widespread success for her multilingual fonts that have become cornerstones of local culture, and appear in all areas of life across the country. Thus, Sahar’s broad influence as a creator of professional tools for the use of many designers, and in refining the standard of quality for local typographic design continues to grow.”

Yoav Perry

Winner of the Edmond de Rothschild Award in the Emerging Designers Category

Yoav Perry, a graduate and now lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication at Bezalel, is a visual artist and designer focused on transforming abstract ideas into tangible forms. In his work, he integrates images and words and is constantly seeking new and surprising visual expressions. Perry believes in the power of visual syntax and the thought echoes it can evoke. In each creative endeavor, Perry aims to produce complex readings with multiple layers of interpretation, raising questions and potentially seeding new ideas. His work invites viewers to explore the meaning of visual and verbal language and its evolution and changing nature.

Justification for the award: “The Edmond de Rothschild Award for Design is presented to Yoav Perry for his rich body of work in the fields of image design, book design and design for cultural and commercial activity. His works express a profound maturity and professional fortitude, which allows for bold and unconventional experimentation. Perry’s precise, sharp and well executed works offer a variety of typographical and visual solutions for complex and abstract content. His working method allows him to move seamlessly between experiments in analog and digital media, and the risks he takes in his experimental work prove themselves in the creation of unique and fascinating visual languages.”

Almog Sella and Itamar Toren (True Twins Studio)

Winners of the Edmond de Rothschild Award in the Emerging Designers Category

Almog Sella and Itamar Toren are a creative duo of directors-designers specializing in creating commercials, films, and opening credit. Both are graduates, and starting this year, also lecturers in the Department of Visual Communication. Almog and Itamar met while studying at Bezalel and after graduating founded True Twins Studio. In their work as a perfectly synchronized team, they developed a reputation as creators of current and influential commercials, music videos and opening credits for television programs. Their work combining video with animation and motion design reveals an ongoing experimentation with new techniques and approaches to storytelling.

Justification for the award: “The Edmond de Rothschild Design Award is presented to Almog Sella and Itamar Toren, True Twins Studio, for their fascinating and radical work as designers in the fields of film, television and music. Their extraordinary body of work consists of a broad array, a significant part of which is intended for wide commercial distribution, nevertheless maintains a bold, experimental, and avant-garde quality. Their work in developing a visual language, dramaturgy and artistic design is a model of execution in a delicate balance with other creators, as well as showing deep familiarity with the content in each project and success in distilling from it those elements that illuminate additional and unexpected parts of the original work. The designer duo boldly develop different styles, tools and scales in each project – presenting side by side photography and animation, miniature construction and illustration, editing, motion graphics, works based on classic crafts and experiments with innovative techniques. All of this creates a strong visual language, a distinct fingerprint and a unique vision of a young studio.”

Nawal Arafat Awarded Honorable Mention in the Emerging Designer Category

Nawal Arafat is a multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer, and a lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication. She works in the field of culture and art in Israel and abroad with an emphasis on bilingual and trilingual design. She specializes in the print production of various types of books, and develops a visual language for boutiques, community centers, leading companies and galleries.

Justification for the award: “The Edmond de Rothschild Design Award Honorable Mention is presented to Nawal Arafat, for her continuous activity as a designer-activist for change and improvement of society and the local environment. In her body of work, Arafat presents commitment to inclusive design, showing a deep understanding of the power of visual communication to create change and broad impact. In her impressive typographic design, image projects, signage, exhibitions and books in a variety of contexts, Arafat bases her work on in-depth knowledge, extensive research and an unwavering and distinct worldview. In addition to projects in the field of culture and art, Arafat initiates and develops social projects to raise awareness of Arabic language, culture and identity and significantly influences the local environment.”