Public School

What is the story of your studio ? The studio was founded in 2003. At this time, it was established as Co-Op Studio by Roy Oppenheim and Assaf Cohen, upon returning to Israel after spending a few years in New York, working for MTV and Eyeball. In Israel, Assaf and Roy were mainly doing work for Israeli TV stations, bringing this fresh take on TV design, less gloss, more do-it-yourself with clean aesthetics. In 2012, Johanna joined the studio, and in January 2014, Johanna and Assaf launched a new version of the studio called Public School, incorporating Public School Editions which they started as a side project six months before. The name Public School comes from Assaf’s blog where he posted stuff related to punk, modernism and old art/architecture books.

Can you tell us more about Public School Editions ? Public School Editions started as a thought of making a book about Israeli Modernism, after years of collecting material as part of the Public School blog. We started with small hand-made booklets, which helped us get into the New York Art Book Fair in 2013. We launched our Pax Israeliana Israeli Modernism Index there, with some more books we made for the fair, some printed in Risograph Printing by George at Issue Press. Since then we have made some more pocket books under Public School Editions, which we call 'essay and reference books'. There’s usually a short essay in the beginning of the book and then a bunch of visual references. The book is always printed in one color, to save up on costs and keep stuff easy and affordable. The whole Public School approach has always been very do-it-yourself, a way to preserve forgotten aspects of local culture.

Do you think your work is connected to your locality ? Usually it is. We feel that some aspects of our local culture can easily fade away into history, without being preserved or talked about in retrospect. So we felt a need to put these things on paper. Obviously, we have an interest in global culture as well, but something about the origin of Israeli culture has always been fascinating for us.

What are your stimulations outside design ? Subculture has always been interesting and stimulating for us, also the architecture around us, archival material and old books. We are interested in how design manifests cultural and social changes ; how through looking at art and architecture, you can see a mirror of our society. Interview conducted in October 2015 ©ktlg