Left: David Tartakover, Self Portrait, 1999.
To mark the 80th birthday of David Tartakover - one of Israel's top designers and winner of the Israel Design Award for 2002 - designers Michal Shapira and Yael Bogen sent out an open call for designers and friends to respond to his iconic works. The responses were packed in a postcard box and given to him as a gift.
"Throughout his long career, Tartakover accompanies the State of Israel in almost every important political event and intersection," writes the designer Oded Yehuda, "through his work, he holds a mirror up to the stories of this land. And to us. He was, is still, and will always continue to be part of the discourse, the design canon, and the pantheon of the important creation of this place."
We are honored to host this festive birthday project, done in collaboration with the Shenkar College Archives. Mazal Tov Tarta!
Left: Tartakover, I'm Here, 2004.
Left: Tartakover, Peace Now, 1978.
Left: Tartakover, Mi yimalel gevurot Yisrael, 1982.
Left: Tartakover, We Won't Forget, We Won't Forgive, 1997.
Left: Tartakover, "Peace," 1977. The original poster was designed to commemorate the 30th Independence Day of the State of Israel and refers to the peace agreement signed with Egypt that year.
Left: Tartakover, 1977.
Left: Tartakover, 2008.
The text on both posters reads in Hebrew: "What Else Would You Ask Of Us, Birthland."
Left: Tartkover's "STILL LIFE," which was published for the first time in Ha'ir magazine in 1989, with the inscription: "IDF plastic bullet - 5.56 mm".
Photo: IDF spokesman.
Left: Tartakover, 1987.
A tribute to Tartakover's poster "Asylum City," 1987 (Photo: Ran Arda). The poster was distributed on billboards in Jerusalem presenting Tel Aviv as a secular city free of conflicts - a city of refuge for Jerusalemites. It was circulated for the second time in the streets of Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War (1991) and was then loaded with new meanings. The tribute on the right was made on a photo of a page in the book "Tartakover" published by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, showing red dots, referring to places that were under rocket fire during the first weeks of the October 7th War.
Left: Tartakover, cover of the book Where Were We and What Did We Do, Keter Publishing, 1996.
Left: Tartakover, 1985.
Left: Tartakover, 1978. The original "Israel is not America" poster was distributed among Tartakover's friends and colleagues and pasted as a sticker on their car's rear window. The poster on the right, reads: Israel Is Not.
Left: Cover of the book Tartakover, which was published by Am Oved in 2011.
Text on the original cover by Lahav Halevy.
Left: Tartakover.
Left: the cover of Matti Caspi's album "The Bell" by Tartakover, 1976.
Left: Tartakover, Coffee-Tea Poster, 1985.
Left: Tartakover, Happy New Year Poster, 1985.
Left: Tartakover, Mi yimalel gevurot Yisrael, 1982.
We are thankful to Michal Shapira and Yael Bogen, and to all the designers who took part and shared their work on Madaf.
To follow the ongoing project on Instagram, see HERE.
