Lara Assouad

Tabati Strikes Again

The book that won the Opera Prima award at the Bologna Book Fair 2012

Tabati (the book) published by Dar Onboz, written by Nadine Touma
illustration, typeface and layout design by Lara Assouad
has won the Opera Prima Bologna Ragazzi award for this year at the Bologna Children's Book Fair.

Tabati_Cover - Cover of Tabati (My Ball). Written by Nadine R. L. Touma. Published by Dar Onboz 2010. Lara Assouad

What the jury said excerpt from the official website below:

This truly splendid series of graphic motifs and calligraphic craftsmanship inevitably brings to mind the great avant-garde movements that trod the same path. In a sense, this book has taken up the eternal challenge faced by so many creative endeavours and from which the Egyptians and Gutenberg emerged victorious. A well rounded, meticulously presented book, some of its pages are reminiscent of the Futurists, while also reaching beyond these confines. Vibrantly new in its approach, the publication holds a timeless fascination, posing age-old questions about writing, vision, printing, the structure of the written text, and what our yardstick for appreciation should be. Despite this, it is eminently a children’s book, since it obliges us to start from the beginning and go back to that dawn when the beauty of a written text lay also in the print type. It helps us appreciate the indissoluble bond between word and typographical composition that merge into one single text.

CONGRATULATIONS to our 2 dear Khatt members Nadine Touma and Lara Assouad!