Oded Ezer’s fetish for letters became apparent at an early age. As an 8-year-old in Ramat Gan,

Israel, he would annoy his father by reading aloud any sign whose lettering he found attractive. Now 36, he still views letterforms with childlike awe. A typographer who has designed 25 fonts that are widely used in Israeli newspapers, commercial logos, and event posters, he says, “Letters look like secrets to me. Why A looks like A and Z looks like Z is something mysterious.”

Ezer’s goal is to figure out “what can be done with letters that has never been done before.” The mission has given rise to Biotypography, through which he aims to produce new “transgenic creatures” by fusing typographic elements with, say, ants or human sperm. With another concept, Typoplastic surgery, he envisions letters being grafted onto the human body, like decorative limbs.

When he’s not creating Frankenfonts, he applies his futuristic thinking to time-honored typographic works. He recently designed an ultramodern Jewish marriage contract (known as a ketubah) by using five different languages (and fonts), and put a twist on Milton Glaser’s iconic I NY logo by transforming it into a 3-D jumble of wavy black strips and an origami-like heart.

“I want my thinking to become even more elastic,” Ezer says. For future projects, he will experiment with masks as well as such languages as Arabic, Farsi, and Japanese. “The definition of a typographer is outdated,” he says. “I don’t see myself as a scientist or an artist, just as a typographer who wants to break barriers.” www.ezerdesign.com — ANA T ROSENBERG

oded EZER

from top Frankruhlya typeface based on traditional Hebrew writing; “Helvetica Live!” poster; detail from Ezer’s Biotypography art project

LOCATION: Givatayim, Israel / BEST-KNOWN PROJECT: Typosperma / BIGGEST CREATIVE INSPIRATION: Nature / GOAL FOR THE YEAR 2020: To be the first typographer on Mars / TITLE OF NONIMAGINARY MONOGRAPH: The Typographer’s Guide to the Galaxy (Spring 2009) / WOULD RATHER DIE THAN DESIGN: “Any more logos for commercial television channels”