A designer by day.

Wow. Four postless months already! In my mind, I was always updating this blog with very interesting stuff. But I gotta take a stroll outside of the walls of my brain from time to time.

A lot of things have been happening lately  and it would be a shame not to share them with whoever is reading this!

For the past 2 months I've been taking part in Desmeem. Desmeem is a collaborative project between Lebanese and European designers to promote the awareness of design as a problem solving tool for social and environmental issues. It's been a great ride and it's only getting more intense as it nears its end! I'm part of the Sustainable Consumerism team and we've been working on creating a community-based system for reusing / recycling plastic bags. We organized a great event where we worked with students/teachers on teaching them how they can make pretty things with plastic bags threads and the enthusiasm was very heartwarming.  We're also working with artisans on creating products with plastic bags and these 2 pretty chairs below are an example of what can be done!




















You can also check out this infographic a team mate made about the state of garbage in Lebanon, very alarming numbers! (Bigger resolution available here.)































The biggest highlight of the project is that it ends with an exhibition during the Beirut Design Week. This is the first design week in Lebanon ever so the mixture of stress and excitement is overwhelming at times! (Now you get why I haven't been blogging properly einh?)

So if you're a designer and you'd like to see yourself as someone with the power to make change you should not miss this event. All the Desmeem teams will be presenting on different days and all the projects are very interesting to know about. My team is on Saturday the 29th :)



∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

On another note, I spent 2 awesome weeks in April between Paris and Bordeaux. I never get enough of these cities, I was planning on making a post with all the pictures of pretty signs and posters that I took but now the idea kind of feels démodé.

I've also found some time to work on a new lettering experiment and to my greatest joy and disbelief it was showcased on TypographyServed! *heart attack*
You can check it out here!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

So see you at the beirut design week peeps! :)

Update: As Samah has mentioned in the comments below, it seems there's another more credible syndicate for graphic designers in Lebanon. I've also received an email from them, it's in french but I'll post a part of it for your information:

Le SPGIL , fondé en 1996, réunit les professionnels des métiers suivants : Graphic Design- Illustration- Bandes Dessinées- Caricature- Animation. 
Le SPGIL a sorti ces métiers de l'ombre, les a officialisés et les a protégés de la concurrence déloyale. Les membres du SPGIL bénéficient des avantages suivants : 
- Une assistance juridique gratuite 
- Un Suivi sur les lois du copyright© 
- Un Dépôt Légal et l'Enregistrement des logos, des personnages et des mascottes 
- Des Barèmes de tarifs pour les travaux des 5 professions 
- Des Contrats types pour les 5 professions.

Grace aux efforts déployés durant 3 ans , le SPGIL est l'un des 8 syndicats fondateurs de la CAISSE MUTUELLE UNIFIEE DES ARTISTES LIBANAIS, instaurée sous le décret 7535 du 12 Février 2012.

Ainsi, tous les membres du SPGIL bénéficient des avantages supplémentaires de cette caisse mutuelle, à savoir essentiellement, l'Hospitalisation et la Retraite.

Pour votre adhésion ou pour toute autre information n'hésitez pas à nous contacter : 
e-mail: spgil96@yahoo.com 
tel/fax: 01/616771 
mobile : 03/827511

 
I've been wanting to blog about this for a while now but thought I'd do some research prior to the post. Surprisingly enough, there was little found. I even sent an email inquiring about more information but haven't received any reply yet. So without further ado, please meet The Lebanese Graphic Design Syndicate!



Good news is we now have one. Bad news is I wouldn't be so proud to join!
According to Icograda (yes, we're listed in Icograda):

The Lebanese Graphic Design Syndicate is founded in 1976, reformed and restructured in 2010 to become the only official syndicate and professional forum for graphic designers in Lebanon, certified from the Lebanese ministry of interior and remunerated from the Lebanese government.
The syndicate is assessing the quality of graphic designers while at the same time establishing a better environment for them, by tapping into the professional interests of communication designers, Creating a developed market, Enhancing the design skills and backgrounds, Design policies concerning governmental and public matters, Developing the creative climate.

Well, to tell you the truth, I've been waiting for so long to be assessed by a force as creative as the LGDS! Now I can seriously hope for a better environment for us designers.
I mean, look at that logo! I'm in love with it! I've never seen such a smart, harmonious, typographic composition portraying what our world is truly about: the labyrinth of communication! And that website! Such dreamy horizons, smooth gradients and perfect slideshows! If there's one thing I've learned as a designer it's that no website should claimed as such if it doesn't have a weather report and a calendar. Plus, you can tell how well a website is doing by how much advertising space it has. So there you go!

Nuff said. I guess I will be waiting for that email to consider joining the syndicate. If ever. And if any of you readers is already a member I would love for you to share that experience with us!

What better way to fill a gloomy Sunday morning than with some nice type experiments? I was thinking about this exercise for quite a while now, trying to find a way to involve people with typography. I think people aren't aware of the impact typography has on their minds. So, I picked a few famous movies, and imitated the font the movie title was written in to draw different words that are also clues to what the movie is.

So come on, try to guess the following movies and tell me your results in the comments section!

This can seem a bit too long, but if you hum along, you’ll find it a cheerful song!

On the 1st day of Stressmas
My boss said to me
You don’t really think you’re leaving work early!


On the 2nd day of Stressmas
A client said to me
I need 4 new placemats
Full of cheerful red hats
You don’t really think you’re leaving work early! 


On the 3rd day of Stressmass
My sister said to me
We need to go shopping
For mom, dad and siblings
I have 4 new placemats
Full of cheerful red hats
I don’t really think I’m leaving work early!


On the 4th day of Stressmas
Same client said to me
Scratch that line on holiday cheer
Please do mention the new year
I need to go shopping
For my parents and siblings
I need my 4 placemats
We’re late on promoting that
You don’t really think you’re leaving this early!


On the 5th day of Stressmas
My conscience said to me
YOU’RE MISSING THE ESSENCE!
Scratch that line on holiday cheer
Also mention the new year
You need to go shopping
For your parents and siblings
Finish up those placemats
With the silly red hats
You really should be leaving work early!



On the 6th day of Stressmas
Secret santa gave to me
A stress ball shaped in a reindeer
To squeeze out of all life dear
YOU’RE MISSING THE ESSENCE! 
Stuck with rhymes on holiday cheer
That don’t mention the new year
I still haven’t gone shopping
For my parents and siblings
Copy paste those placemats
With different colored silly hats
I am never leaving work early!

1. A good designer has no pride at all.
We designers have this "better than thou" attitude that seems to just come with the job. And when we're working on something, we get so immersed in our perfectly justifiable color palettes and obsessively kerned type, it becomes hard to look at what we're doing like total strangers. And that is essential for effective design. I made it a point to always work on a visual, leave it be for a night, then look at it the next day to find all the wrongs of the world in it. And when you don't have time to do that, another designer's point of view is all you need. And this is where your pride should leave the way to objectivity. Listen closely, discuss, you might not be convinced but still you should try. This wasn't always so easy but if you try it a couple of times and it works, then it's silly not to try it over and over again.

2. A graphic design degree is the last pre-requisite for becoming a design God.
In my working environment, we don't all come from a graphic design background. And this is the one things that has made these 4 years all the more enriching. I found this offending at first, having my work criticized by people who hadn't spent years being formed into designers. But then I found that a different point of view is always a good one. It's not what they teach you at college that makes you better. It's the osmosis of different minds and backgrounds that does. You'll find yourself back to stage one a lot of times and your pride will have to zip it here too. Because this process of re-working things is what makes you better whether you like it or not.

3. Client education rarely ever works.
Clients will always want their logos bigger, will always ask you to copy their always better competitors and you will always have to shrink your visual culture to fit theirs. This will make you hate your job. And your life. But then, out of the blue, you'll get a client that is willing to take your advice and see things your way. Forget about the others, give them what they want while keeping your design conscience as clear as possible. You don't need their stress. And quoting Baz Luhrmann: "If you succeed in doing this, tell me how!"

4. The advertising/design community is a shallow, deceitful one.
I've been to a couple of community gatherings these past years only to discover that they would be better titled masquerades. Fake smiles, even more fake praise and the whole "better than thou" thing tattooed on everybody's forehead. I'm lucky not to be working in a big agency and lucky to be surrounded by people who are exceptions to the rule.

5. You are the sole responsible for keeping your creativity alive.
Through these last years, I always felt like I was falling into some sort of routine. Even if I've seen a lot of people come and go and made it a point to learn something new from each and every one of them, 4 years can still weigh you down. But then I decided I should take matters into my own hands. Now I always venture into unknown territories when I'm working on a new project. Sometimes I even imagine myself being someone else working on it, kind of like 'what would whoever do'.  And although these trials might sometimes turn out to be a waste of time, they remain essential to keeping a fresh perspective on things. So are personal projects, personal research, freelance and everything non-design that you do outside the office. But most of all, so is giving yourself a break every now and then and not taking yourself too seriously.

6. Comic sans can be used right.
Okay no, not really. But, on a more technical note, I've learned that gradients work, that shadows make a huge difference and that the lens flare can be your friend. I've also learned that the designs you dream of doing are rarely the solution that needs to be met, that in order to convince a client you will have to work longer and harder on the preview than on the actual design. There may always be things that I will refuse to succumb to but I'm sure a day will come to prove me wrong.

So, 4 years have passed and I still can't claim that I know better who I want to be as a designer. How long the self-discovery process is supposed to last, I have no idea. Has it gone too long? Should I know by now? I'm not sure. But looking back, what I'm sure of is that I have gone from one phase to another, never lingering in one too long. And I'm just curious to see where the next phase will take me!

This post will not be about things I've learned at TEDxBeirut. The things I've learned are still raging in my mind and will definitely nor fit in one blog entry.

This is more about feelings/impressions TEDx has installed in me. I felt proud, proud of being Lebanese, proud of having a glimpse at Lebanese dreams coming to life. Lebanon is always perceived as an obstacle or rather an alibi for not achieving one's goals. Saturday's talks taught me otherwise. With enough faith, determination and perseverance, we can do it. Bassam Jalgha needed a 'oud' tuner and so he simply invented one. Ziad Abi Chaker fell in love with garbage and so he simply found a solution for it. Passion will get you there.

Still, what if being in the presence of so many inspiring people made me feel so much less inspiring? I don't know how many people react the same way I do to all of this but somehow it all makes me feel more helpless. Perhaps, this is my one step deeper towards hitting bottom and then digging my way up again. This is getting closer to limitation before finding inspiration.

One of my favorite talks was To Ted or Not To Ted. Mahmoud Yammout traces the pros and cons of Tedding. Is another fast soundbite enough to change one's perspective on things? He argues that the solution for a dilemma is not either/or but a way out of it, inviting a third subjective. I'm a very contradictive person by nature, I wander in the in-between of almost everything. It's the talk i felt I related to most.

But don't get me wrong. TEDxBeirut did not have a negative effect on me. This conflict I'm goind through is priceless. Every awakened feeling and triggered thought is priceless. The energy of the team behind TEDx was priceless. That is perhaps what touched me most. I've had the chance of being a small part of this team and I've learned so much about passion and dedication even from afar. So thank you team, for being you and for putting forth this wonderful experience!

You can still check out the saved live stream on TEDxBeirut's website, it's really worth going through the pain of endless buffering! My favorites were by Mahmoud Natout, Halim Madi and Ziad Abi Chaker. The separate talks should be online in a month time.

I’ve decided to add this new section to the blog to spark more discussions about what we do as designers and how we affect the world. So read below and let’s chat!

1: Do we design for the people or for peers?

It’s true, whenever we get a new project, our first step is to look closer into the target market and dedicate ourselves into luring it.

But I always find myself wondering whether people are really affected by the visual aesthetics of what we do. Do our efforts really matter? When your target market is as specific as an age group, you know your energy is not wasted, because it’s clear that kids will respond to more colors and cartoons and exclamation marks! But when the service/product you’re designing serves a broader audience, can you be sure of how sensitive these people are to design?

This question is most present when I see a poorly designed product/service doing wonders numbers wise. The people didn’t care about the visual brand but rather about what it really offers. And that’s fine by me! That’s even, ethically speaking, quite the perfect thing to happen. But it saddens me because it makes me all the more aware that I stress for nothing.

And on the other hand, one has to admit, that through the course of creating a brand, we designers are not only concerned with building loyalty to the brand but most importantly concerned with how it will look in our portfolios and how it will measure up to the work of designer peers.

In the race between form and function, functionality is always a priority both to the designer and the client. Functionality serves the people without their knowing, magazines made more entertaining to read, health brochures made more easy to understand, paper work made less painful to fill out. But when it comes to the form, nothing is certain.

What makes it even harder is that once you’re a designer you can never claim to be in a non-designer’s shoes. Texts you read will always be about kerning and leading before meaning.

So designers, do you fall into the designing for peers issue too? Would you risk your portfolio over a client’s needs or would you rather risk the success of a brand over peer recognition?

And people, how sensitive do you think you are to design? When you’re standing in front of a supermarket shelf do you pick one product over the other because of the way it looks? Is visual experience a factor when you choose a restaurant?

I’m usually one to hate inspirational speeches, I mean what a load of crap! All words and no actions, all theories and no applications. But with the TEDTalks it’s different, having real people, from all walks of life, sharing their experiences is crapless inspiration. So I went yesterday to the TEDxBeirut 3rd salon and here are a couple of things that I've learned about myself and the world:

1 - The left hemisphere has a huge hold of my life. I’m all about the left hemisphere. I’m over conscious of myself and of the things around me in the wrong way. I should stop postponing those yoga lessons.

2 - Lately I’ve been telling myself that I’ve spent too much time curled up into my own bubble and that it’s probably time for me to open up and get out there. And it kinda felt like that was naturally happening for me. And coincidentally, in one of the TEDTalks, the guy talks about how ideas are more likely to be born when you’re in a group. I’ve never experienced that really. I always shut down in a brainstorming session and I almost always come up with ideas when I’m alone. Or maybe, thinking about it, all the research we do is a kind of fictional group.

3 - Connecting VS protecting. Now that is a struggle that fits me perfectly. I love sharing ideas but there’s a very motherly, protective voice inside that tells me I should protect them. After TEDTalks I have all the more reason to fight that voice. “Chance favors the connected mind.”

4 - All work and no play makes Nisrine a very boring, unproductive person. And that is a scientific fact.

5 - It’s OK that I haven’t been giving my blog the attention it deserves because I’ve been unknowingly fighting local warming!

So make sure to attend TEDxBeirut on September 24th at Berytech Technological Pole. I’m sure it’ll be an event to remember!

www.tedxbeirut.com
www.ted.com

My biggest concern when it comes to this blog is personalizing it. I know nothing about CSS and I try my best to work within the available blogger templates while still trying to maintain a minimalistic and clear design. One of the last dilemmas I faced while changing it is whether to use a serif or a sans serif for the body text. I was always under the impression that serif is more readable due to the serifs that guide the horizontal flow of the eyes. After all, there must be a good reason why all books we read are set in serifs. However, turns out for the screen it’s different.

I’ve found a great article that explains the pros and cons. The main argument that kind of does it for me is a technical one.

“When typefaces are digitized for use on computers, the letter forms have to fit within a relatively small pixel grid, often leading to what are called the “jaggies”. Many web professionals such as graphic designers claim that this relatively low resolution cannot render effectively enough the fine finishing strokes of serif typefaces, and that sans serif typefaces lend themselves more naturally to being digitized, and come out cleaner and thus more legible.”

Make sure to read the whole thing for a more extensive explanation. It’s really well researched and written with great references.

The concept of rebirth seems as old as birth itself. It’s as if Man fell so in love with life the minute he set eyes on the world that the idea of it having an end was unfathomable.

In ancient Egypt the scarab was a sign of eternal renewal and reemergence of life. The Ouroboros, the snake devouring its own tail, is an ancient symbol of eternal recurrence, representing cycles that begin anew as soon as they end.

But I believe the Phoenicians were the greatest visionaries of all. For them to have created the legend of the phoenix, they must’ve long predicted the fate of their own land, the fate of Lebanon, the embodiment itself of rebirth. And we love to prove our ancestors right. We love to watch it smolder to ashes and then fight our way up again. We even brag about it. But the eternal return of Lebanon, as heroic as it may be, isn’t as admirable as it sounds. We do rise after each fall but we lose parts of ourselves each time and we’re losing track of the essence of it all. We worry only about the “eternal” part and not about the “return”. We want to burn and be reborn again because we don’t know how else to do things. And we’ve sadly managed to turn the heroic into the horrific. But I digress.

I visited ‘Rebirth: Lebanon 21st Century Contemporary Art’ yesterday, an exhibition of works by 49 contemporary Lebanese artists, on the theme of rebirth and it got me thinking about the above amongst many other things. Nothing like art to provoke thought really.

Teachers, lecturers, peers, everybody who's anybody will tell you that the biggest, most important step in any design project is research. And this is largely, though not undeniably, true. Back in college, I wasn't quite the online research guru that I am now. The only 2 websites that I ever ran to for help were Google images and DeviantArt. And although, looking back, I realize that my visual eye was really immature, I still made it top of my class. I didn't need endless hours online, just my concept and the little visual culture I had growing in the back of my head. Things have drastically changed now. The magic word for any Google research now is "showcase", they're everywhere and they cover EVERYTHING!
So after going from little to too much visual research, I'm realizing that I should hit the brakes again. Why, you might ask? Here's the reasoning behind it:

So while doing some research today I found this!

Various forms of dysfunction appear among populations exposed to typography for long periods of time. Listed here are a number of frequently observed afflictions :

Typophilia
An excessive attachment to and fascination with the shape of letters, often to the exclusion of other interests and object choices. Typophiliacs usually die penniless and alone.

Typophobia
The irrational dislike of letterforms, often marked by a preference for icons, dingbats, and—in fatal cases—bullets and daggers. The fears of the typophobe can often be quieted (but not cured) by steady doses of Helvetica and Times Roman.

Typochondria
A persistent anxiety that one has selected the wrong typeface. This condition is often paired with okd (optical kerning disorder), the need to constantly adjust and readjust the spaces between letters.

Typothermia
The promiscuous refusal to make a lifelong commitment to a single typeface—or even to five or six, as some doctors recommend. The typothermiac is constantly tempted to test drive "hot" new fonts, often without a proper license."

I'm sure we've all felt obsessive about type but now it's been pinned down to our faces! It's official. We are sick (or at least I am!).

This is according to Ellen Lupton.

Ever wondered what's behind that 4m high monumental wall along the Beirut Highway (going from downtown to karantina)? I had always seen that "shou fi wara l 7ayt" graffiti on the wall and it always made me wonder, but I had always missed the link to the answer.

Well,
*drum rolls*
it's a train station!

I can't believe that! Mar Mikhael station, hidden right in the middle of Beirut. And to think I went all the way to the Bekaa to see another station along that railway.
Please check this link for more info: shou fi wara l 7ayt?

Also, as you can see in the events page, there will be a 2-day open doors at Tripoli Railway Station on June 25 and 26. Check the event's facebook page and be there!

Seriously, is there anything better than discovering the historical treasures of your own country?!

It took me a while (a pretty long one actually) to figure out how to go about this one, then I thought I'd mess around with the awesome blend tool in Illustrator and this is where it got me!

You know how, sometimes, when you learn a new word, you start seeing it everywhere around you? The same thing is happening with the "lebanese oldies revival" theme. For instance, every Friday you can now watch Sami Clark, Abdo Mounzer and Le Petit Prince at Orientis and bring back the golden age! And just yesterday, I went to the opening of VideoWorks 2011 and the opening video was all based on footage from that era.

The short is called Under a Rainbow by Roy Dib. It featured scenes from Remi Bandali's Amani tahta kaws kozah (which, by the way, is a must-see movie) spliced with scenes from Studio L Fann, Samira Toufic, Ferial Karim, Madonna, etc. All cut and edited in a way that greatly contrasts our happy childhood memories with what was really going on at a time of war.
It's sad that my generation turns amnesiac when it comes to the 80s and that this period in time might never be thoroughly documented, not politically nor musically. I'm in constant search of what defines our Lebanese identity as such and I strangely find the answer in the songs and artists of that era.

The second movie was Prologue by Raed & Rania Rafei. It handles yet another subject that am sure most of us have never heard about and that's March 19, 1974 when AUB students rebelled against the administration and took over the campus. The rebellion was mainly against a 10% increase in tuition but it underlined deep divisions along social, political and ideological lines.
As the name states, there will be another movie about the event and I can't wait to watch it!

VideoWorks 2011 remains till May 21, you should really check it out.
More info here.

Last week, there was something on the news about a statue of Said Akl being unveiled in Zahle in his homage. It reminded me of this article I had read a couple of years ago about Said Akl's "Lebanese Language" in Bidoun Magazine.

I'm someone who loves the Arabic language and who won't go into the "Are we Arabs or Phoenicians" argument because it doesn't matter to me, we're all passers-by. But you have to salute Said Akl's radical nationalism (and I'm not necessarily referring to his rather controversial political views here, only to his literary ones).

So Akl's "Lebanese" is a Latinate version of colloquial Arabic, rooted in ancient Phoenician script. It uses Latin letters in addition to a few newly designed letters and some accented Latin letters to suit the Lebanese phonology. Below is an image of his alphabet.

So I decided to try out the "Lebanese Oldies" series digitally and here's what it looks like! So what do you think? Should I rework the others too?























Sorry bout the name but a designer's gotta do what a designer's gotta do!

I had the chance yesterday to attend a typography workshop with Tarek Atrissi.
As a student, Tarek was always a sort of idol, himself being a lebanese student who travelled abroad for studies and then settled in the Netherlands to start a studio that will later on handle the most innovative arabic typography projects worldwide.

What was quite interesting about the conference/workshop is seeing the process of some projects and making out the difference between calligraphy, typography and lettering. I had always thought that I needed to be excellent at calligraphy in order to come up with good typographic design. Tarek made it clear that a designer can not be a calligrapher unless he puts lots of effort and most of his time into calligraphy. That is why a designer's job is mainly to know how to art direct calligraphers and typographers. I've always been someone who needs to be great at everything or nothing at all so this kind of gave me a wake up call to change my perspective!

It seems that today is World graphics day! Yeyyyyy!
On this occasion, let's all give out a thought for all the consumers we've deceived, all the corporations we've enriched, all the waste we've encouraged and all the dumbing-down we've cheered for.

What's funny is that on Wikipedia this is supposed to be an occasion "when designers reflect and hope that an international network can contribute to a greater understanding between people and can help to build bridges where divides and inequities exist."

Yeah maybe that'll happen when bridges and understanding pay.
Have a proud World Graphics Day :)