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 :)



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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!

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

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!

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’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

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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!