A designer by day.

To all of you who go totally blank on us when we tell you that we’re graphic designers, here’s the lowdown on who we really are.

We are the voice in your head that tells you to buy the green box of snacks instead of the pink one because we made it look so much healthier knowing that you will never look close enough to realize that both have the same nutrition facts.

Anthropologists have lately revealed news about the emergence of a highly evolved branch of homo sapiens. They call it homo ophtalmus mainesthai.

This specie can be traced back to the late 19th century when the so-called graphic arts began manifesting themselves in large advertising posters by the likes of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha (proclaimed possible ancestors of the specie). However, some scientists presume it is more accurate to date it back the invention of movable type printing in approximately 1439 A.D. by Johannes Gutenberg.

Whichever the case, it is without doubt that the homo ophtalmus mainesthai witnessed the culmination of their evolution during the 21st century crossover, when development in computer technology was peaking (and has been peaking ever since).

In fact, the said specie has undergone a series of mutational physical changes that define it as such. Extensive studies and experiments have shown the following characteristics:

For those of you who haven't heard about the event yet, Typographic Matchmaking in the City is coming to Beirut!

  




























The Typographic Matchmaking in the City project is a design research project investigating new approaches for bilingual lettering and poetic narrative for public space. The project have proven to be highly inspirational for the participating designers; it brought together designers from different cultural backgrounds to intensely collaborate, over a period of 2 years, on creating coherent products with groundbreaking results. This project shows the important role that design can play in initiating cultural change, assimilation and integration—by simply using our daily basic communication mode: the written word.

I am too lazy to have taste. I prefer to have my opinions already made for me. I hate all time-telling devices since i like to think of myself as timeless.
Favorite song: Hotel California
Favorite movie: The graduate

Google Plays With Helvetica, Comic Sans For April Fools' 2011 Gag

I had such a good laugh when I learned about this! Not many people will get it, some might actually enjoy a google page in all Comic Sans but for us designers, it's a very smart prank to pull!

A while back I watched “Un chien andalou”, the surrealist movie produced by Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali. The first scene of the movie shows the slitting a woman’s eye with a razor and what is called “the vitreous humour” spilling out of it. I hadn’t seen something so shocking for quite a while. Following the movie, there was a commentary by Buñuel’s son and he made a very interesting point. He said that advertising today relies mostly on the surrealist movement for its shock quality. Quite an obvious thing, but for some reason I had never thought of advertising as “surreal”.

Thinking about it, advertising in the beginning of the 20th century was concerned with simply informing the consumer about the product in the bluntest way possible. Then a shift happened and the focus became how the product made you feel. People and objects were taken out of context, creating a scene that makes no sense at all and yet creates a surrealistic reality. And you want to buy that reality. There’s nothing so interesting and new about all of this except for the historical timeline maybe. But what I really find alarming is the shock factor.