Design To Tell

The section 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.

Who are you?

I’m Tali Liberman, an independent designer and artist working between Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. For the past seven years I’ve been living in Amsterdam, and for the last two and a half years, I’ve also been Neta’s mother. I hold a B.Des from the Visual Communication Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. My work operates on two interconnected levels: commissioned projects within the fields of art and culture, and research-based personal initiatives. These two realms naturally overlap, creating an ongoing dialogue that challenges, enriches, and continually reshapes my practice.

How did you enter the world of design, and specifically book design?

I was always connected to the world of art—growing up, I took art classes, and in high school I studied both art and biology. The truth is that at first I was actually debating whether to study marine biology or animal therapy, but Bezalel was always somewhere in my mind as a dream. One day I visited the Bezalel website and read about the Visual Communication Department—without fully understanding what it meant—which led me to consider whether to take the psychometric exam or apply to the 6B preparatory program. I decided to go for the prep course and leave the question of “what I want to do in life” open :)

At that time, I didn’t know how to use software like Photoshop, and all my work was handmade—cutting, collaging, sewing. Very quickly I realized that this was the right place for me, and studying at Bezalel became one of the most formative and meaningful periods of my life.

As for books, I’ve always had a deep love for them. I used to collect old books and encyclopedia volumes thrown out on the street, sometimes even from the Bezalel library or from secondhand bookshops on Sha'atz Street. I’m drawn to book design because it allows me to engage critically with narratives—to dismantle and reconstruct, to reveal complexity, and to propose new perspectives.

The book, as a physical and tangible format, enables the tension between representation and power to become present. For me, book design is a way of shaping not only text and image, but also the reader’s experience and the way knowledge is perceived and received.

Which book challenged you the most to design, and why?

One of the most challenging books I worked on was Crowded Walls by artist Khen Shish. The book focuses on her early years as an artist, during which most of her works were site-specific installations and collages she applied directly onto walls.

The concept was to create a viewing rhythm that would allow the reader to move along the walls from a very close perspective, so that the scale of the paper fragments and collages would remain true to their original one-to-one proportions. Since the works were created years ago and had not been professionally photographed, we didn’t have high-quality documentation to work with. For that reason, we decided that Khen would need to reconstruct the “walls” in her studio.

We tried to keep the process as intuitive as possible and faithful to the spirit of the original works. We used both new photographs and scans of individual paper fragments. The book is printed on several types of paper to create a tangible distinction between the “wall” and the collage layers.

It’s a book I am very proud of, although unfortunately it has not yet been produced—the papers we selected are extremely thin and not commonly used in Israel, which added another layer of challenge :)

Who have been the most influential people in your work as a book designer?

After graduating, I worked with David Tartakover, and it was with him that I first designed a commissioned book for a client. At first, it was for a project I knew would never be published, but it was excellent practice. Later, we also worked together on the book for his retrospective exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art—we cut pages from his “Black Books” and physically arranged them on the floor. I learned a great deal from him about editing. Beyond that, his personal library was immense, and I would go through the books, absorbing and learning. I have also been influenced by many colleagues, especially Dana Gez and Naomi Geiger from Studio Gimel 2.

Can you tell us about a project that took you to unexpected places?

Unrendered Road, my MFA thesis project at the Sandberg Institute, was the first film I ever created—even though I had originally planned to make a book. It began as a research project on geopolitical forces and the politics of technology in conflict zones, exploring whether reality in these areas is mediated by digital interfaces—or perhaps whether the interfaces and technology themselves shape reality. Technology is not just a tool we use; it also produces metaphors, simulations, and worldviews.

The work was born out of a significant challenge: the subject was politically charged and complex, and for a long time, I felt paralyzed. On top of that, the film was shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced me to direct remotely and contend with unpredictable conditions in the field. This very lack of control became part of the work itself, leading to a result completely different from what I had imagined. Since then, the film has been screened at international festivals, including IFFR in Rotterdam, Transmediale in Berlin, and ICA in London.

A book that inspires you from your personal library, but that you did not design?

Two books that have stayed with me are Batia Suter – Parallel Encyclopedia 2 and Max Israeliana. Suter places existing images in new contexts, revealing new meanings through them, while Max Israeliana examines Israeli aesthetics of the 1970s–90s through a socio-economic-political lens. Both explore the relationship between image, context, and culture—a theme that also drives my own work.

What is different about being a designer in Israel versus in the Netherlands? What do you miss, and what do you not miss at all?

In the Netherlands, design is perceived more as an artistic and research tool, and there are many opportunities to develop personal projects thanks to grants. At the beginning of my MFA, I was asked, “What is your practice?”—a moment that really made me reflect. In Israel, I was mostly focused on client-driven projects, whereas here I had the opportunity to approach design as a research-based or artistic tool—a perspective that was very exciting then, and continues to inspire me today.

The connections between designers in Europe are also impressive—everyone knows each other, from galleries to publishing houses, in Italy, Germany, or Estonia. This broad exposure to very different design worlds from what I knew in Israel has allowed me to develop my own design language. I continue to work with Israel, so I feel very connected, yet I still miss being part of the art and design community there—and the sense that the people around me understand the complexity of the place I come from, a complexity that deeply shapes the way we create and talk about design. At the same time, working abroad has opened me up to other mediums, such as video—and even there, I approach the work in the same way: like flipping through a book, organizing sequences and movement.

Must-know international publishing houses!?

Roma Publication, Valiz, empire.b.o.o.k.s.

Can you tell us about interesting projects you are currently working on?

These days, I’m working on two books that are on their way to print. Personal Papers by Nurit Gur Lavi (Karni) is an artist’s book accompanying her exhibition at the Makom Le’omanut gallery. Gur Lavi’s (Karni) work is based on ten notebook pages written by her grandmother, and deals with the gap between the figure of the pioneer who devoted her life to the Zionist project, and the figure that emerges from the papers—one that reveals pain, loneliness, and heartbreak. We approached the book as a direct continuation of the artwork, and therefore, its layout and structure continue the same themes of concealment, erasure, and fragmentation.

The second book is Flora X Kaufman by Yaacov Kaufman, produced for Beit Liebling and published by Poraz Books. I am working on it together with designer Noam Noy and under the editorial direction of Eran Eisenhammer. It is Kaufman’s personal lexicon, focusing on creation, design, and pedagogy, and it accompanies a series of his works alongside our research and graphic analysis.

If you could go back in time, would you still choose to specialize in book design?

Yes—or I might have been a marine biologist.

Who would you invite to the column?

Noa Schwartz.