Becca Leffell Koren

Becca Leffell Koren is a multidisciplinary designer and educator with a focus in publication, exhibition, and systems design. She collaborates with clients in the fields of art, culture, architecture, and education. Previously she has worked for the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the RISD Museum (Providence, Rhode Island), and This Is Our Work (New York). She holds an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in communication design from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Both her client work and research are type-driven with a particular focus on the book form, and blurring the line between flatness and dimensionality in work for print, space, and screen.

Personal website

Work by Becca Leffell Koren

Three pastel-toned booklets laid out on a white background (from left to right, in gray, lavender/blue, and orange/coral/red). The covers include artists' names with titles below, in both Hebrew and English, a geometric pattern in the center, and supplementary information at the bottom in a row.

Identity and publication design for a series of location-specific exhibitions featuring works selected or created for a corridor in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2013

Photographs by Elie Posner.

A book with a colorful cover and photographs of artworks within: the title reads "Color Gone Wild" with smaller text "Fauve and Expressionist Masterworks from the Merzbacher Collection", the inner cover a bright orange-red hue.

Bilingual exhibition catalogue for Color Gone Wild at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2013

26x19 cm, 136pp. Photographs by Elie Posner.

Orange and silver book photographed on a deep ultramarine background. The cover features an abstract, curved pattern with the letters "MFA" embossed in the center. Smaller text, in white, reads "Master of Fine Arts" — "Visual Arts" — "Washington University in St. Louis".

Viewbook for the MFA in Visual Arts program at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, 2019

6x9", 128pp. Second edition.

(Cyan) blue and white poster, which contains information about a Keller Easterling lecture: the title set in a bold, tall font with smaller text below. The background consists of an abstract composition of a shape with shadow radiating from the corners in two color ways, inverse images of each other.

Poster for guest lecturer, architect Keller Easterling, 2015

For the Rhode Island School of Design.

The corner of a gallery space with light gray/cream walls, with the words "Drawing Conclusions" connected across the corner with a wavy line. To the left is a framed artwork; to the right, some wall text.

Exhibition graphics for Drawing Conclusions at the RISD Museum, Providence RI, 2016

Views of the covers of a book with two interior spreads: the images are printed in ultramarine/a dark blue, with both Hebrew and English text set in black. The front cover, in English, reads "Unresolved (Issues)".

Bilingual exhibition Catalogue for Unresolved (Issues): New Glass From Israel, 2018

For UrbanGlass, Brooklyn. With curator Jennifer-Navva Miliken.

A person viewing information/installation in a gallery space: mint, blue, gold-yellow, and red labels make up a legend to the left, with more info about each to the right.

Bilingual exhibition design (French and English) for the permanent exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Montreal, 2018

Whereas Hoops, 2022

Artist book created with John Early and Noah Cohan for their activist effort Whereas Hoops. Whereas Hoops calls our attention to the lack of basketball courts in Forest Park, linking it to the complex history of racial relations in St. Louis and the veil of prejudice that overlays the relationship of the city and the sport of basketball. (6×8.75 in, 54pp)

AxiOme: Invisible, 2023

The forthcoming monograph designed for Axi:Ome architecture studio run by Sung Ho Kim and Heather Woofter documents the breadth of a prolific practice presenting 23 projects and supporting essays. The book utilizes layering and emphasizes a lateral pull across spreads to emphasize the invisible plate tectonics of collaboration and negotiation of variables within the architectural process. (8.5×10.5 in, 352pp)

AxiOme: Invisible, 2023

Cover

RENEWED

A chronicle of the results of a three year renovation of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the first since it opened in 1965. (28×24 cm, 120pp) 2011. Photos by Elie Posner.

Humans of St. Louis , 2022

Humans of St. Louis is a 544-page photography book that, with nuance and care, captures the beauty and complexity of life in St. Louis through portraits and narratives from its citizens. The book employs a textured typographic palette, referential to the rich vernacular typographic history of St. Louis’ industrial past, as well as it being the location of notable type foundries active in the 19th and 20th centuries. The typographic voice brings a visual rhythm that reinforces the diversity of the people within the pages of the book. Front and back inserts are printed in a two-color run that correlates warm red to the prominence of brick, and blue to the city’s place along the Mississippi river. Photographic collage sequences guide the reader into the book through the architectural texture and landscape of the city as an entry point to meeting its inhabitants. Designed with Audra Hubbell. (8.25×10 in, 544pp)