Ismar David

enjoyed a career that spanned six-and-a-half decades and encompassed a broad spectrum of graphic and architectural design. Arguably his most important contribution to the visual arts, and indeed our social fabric as a whole, is his ground-breaking typeface David Hebrew, conceived in the 1930s as a multi-style, multi-weight family of fonts. His many years teaching calligraphy and his two writing manuals have influenced and continue to influence generations of graphic artists. As an active participant in the graphic community in Jerusalem in the thirties and forties and in New York thereafter, he crossed paths not only with luminaries in his fields, but also with those who, although less well known or not remembered at all today, deserve our attention. In this website, we explore his work, his life and his times.

Ismar David in his studio, New York
Ismar David in his studio in New York in the early 1990s