'I am after the maximum communication with minimum elements' - Noma Bar

That quote describes his work in the best way possible. Noma Bar is a graphic designer, who in my opinion is a genius. He was born in Israel in 1973 and that he graduated from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. 


The reason that his piece work is because they are simple but at the same time you need to have a good look at them in order to get the image. 

This image is called Red Riding Hood. You have that larger image which is the wolf, which is the first thing you see and then you look closer to see that the wolf's nose is Little Red Riding Hood. It communicates the fairy tale perfectly, with the wolf following his nose and Red Riding Hood at the same time. Not only is the way Bar has drawn it show the fairy tale but also his choice of colour. The earthy neutral background, as if it is the woods, the dark dominate colour of the wolf, the red, which is both the signature cape and the mouth of the blood thirsty wolf and the white, which highlights the innocent face of Red Riding Hood and the sharp teeth of the wolf. It all contributes to the final product. Even the placement of the wolf is important, the fact that we only see his head, as if he is hiding behind a tree, works so well. It is so clever.

Bar does loads of pieces based on famous cultural subjects, like:

Slumdog Millionaire 

Shakespeare: To be or not to be?

His other work is often more political, for example:

Iraq Oil

Nuclear Iran

I especially like the Iraq Oil. The scale of the large powerful hand squeezing/forcing the oil out of tiny Iraq, shows us how all powerful America forced Iraq into the state it is now because of oil. The hand clearing wearing a suit if you look closely. Such small detail finishes the idea of corporate, capitalist America squeezing 'black gold' from poor helpless Iraq, simply because we associate suits with the corporate world.

There were two other pieces that I in particular.

Banged Up

In both of these images Bar only uses two colours and the shapes are simple. I could not find the name of the one on the left, but it is one of my favourite ones. It is creepy, wrong and very affective. The legs are just standing, their not posing in any way and this small hand is creeping up and touching something which is not meant to be touch. As soon as I saw this one it became one of my favourites, it is so simple and yet so powerful. It is pure genius. The second one, 'Banged Up' I also find powerful because of the very childlike nature of the drawing. It has something of a children's cartoon, with the over sized head and tiny face. That tiny little tear that you do not see at first, because the first thing that you see is the keyhole, just breaks your heart. The positioning of the graphic bang in the middle of the image works, because not only does that show the position of the keyhole on a door well, but it also shows how small and helpless the little person is with all that space closing in on him. The person even has a little nose.

To conclude Noma Bar is recently one of the greatest artist/graphic designers I have seen. His work is inspirational and very clever. He shows how much someone can do with so little.