Posted by Tarek Atrissi

I was glad to be part - as a contributing Author - of the book “New Vision: Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century”, published by Thames & Hudson and Edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi and Salwa Mikadi. With over 500 stunning colour illustrations “New Vision: Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” offers the most comprehensive, scholarly and in-depth survey of what is happening at the cutting-edge of art in the Arab world.
Among the five essays in the book that offers a rich context and analysis of contemporary Arab art, my essay -“The Transformed Vernacular New language”- focused on the growing role of graphic design and visual communication as a form of personal expression; and expression reflecting a local visual language developed by a young generation of artists. The essays looks at the development of the discipline of graphic design in the Arab world, and its influences and growth as a contemporary form of visual art- a design language searching for its unique local visual flavor and constantly and curiously looking for visual elements and icons from the past century to be recycled across all fields of visual communication. An analytical look at the continuous search for an independent artistic expression that relates uniquely to the Arab environment, and that lead to rapid developments in the fields of Arabic typography, street graphics, urban art and visual identities, among other art forms. The essays sheds light on the adaptation of popular imagery from public spaces and the transformation of vernacular art into high art.

As part of the 90 illustrated profiles feature of key artists, organizations and galleries, my selection of artists to be included in the book was primarily based on artists with coming from a strong graphic background, using their graphic skills, sense of composition and design sensibility as a main essence behind their creative artistic expression.

Previews of the book are shown above. A recommended read for art lovers as well as anyone interested in the broader Arab cultures.

Posted by Tarek Atrissi

For the second year, I will be a guest critic at the School of Visual Art’s workshop in Design History, Theory and practice in Venice and Rome. An exciting two weeks intensive workshop with some of SVA’s top faculty and some guest Italian faculty members. A great opportunity to experience a design course from SVA in a European context. More info on the workshop can be seen on the following link http://design.sva.edu/masters_workshop_italy/

Posted by Tarek Atrissi

The second half of the year started at the Utrecht School of the Arts, where I teach at the Gaming Design and Development department. In this part of the year, I supervise Masters students with their final year projects, which is usually the outcome of around 7 month of research and work, and which is presented in the form of theory (Supportive Narrative / Thesis) and practice (Final project). While most of the projects are at the beginning phase, a lot of promising ideas and topics are being presented. Hopefully the results will be as exciting as the last academic year.

One of the excellent projects developed and finalized the last year has been a great success to date, gaining significant press coverage and winning the Dutch Game Award for the category “best student game”. “Hollandia”, an exciting 2d fully hand drawn action-adventure game, allows you to discover a beautiful and enchanting world, completely inspired by Dutch folklore, history and art. The story, set in a fairytale Holland, is about Tulpje, an adventurous young girl from the province Friesland. Skilled with a spinning top as a weapon, Tulpje travel through the Netherlands looking for a cure for her sick mother. On her way, she faces all kind of adventures and meet several fairytale characters, from Reynaert the trickster fox to the mysterious black Piets. It was an exciting experience to follow the progress of the project from start to end, and see it turn out as as a solid example of what we try to bring out of our students.

Marthe Jonkers and Ward Lindhout were respectively the Character design and Environment designer of the game. They were the main force behind the visual design of the game (part of the 5 person’s team that designed, developed and programmed the game). The strength of their visual design was that it was supported  by an extensive research that strongly backed up every decision made on the visual level. Marthe focused in her thesis on the possibilities of color usage in game art, and using its full potential to improve the visual quality and game experience. Studying the methods of color usage in art and psychology, she brought thoughtfully color applications to Hollandia in readability, atmosphere, symbolism and relative atmosphere. Ward on the other hand focused on composition in level design. Researching techniques of the old master Dutch painters, he worked on each composition in Hollandia to be carefully arranged in all its components in order to help the readability in the game. Each frame in the game, despite being a dynamic moving screen, is a balanced harmonious composition, with much depth and a deep understanding to compositional laws and related functionality

Hollandia uses key compositional points and lines to determine where the main character and some enemies are being placed. Tulpje is for instance always on the intersection of two 1/3rd lines

A game with a unique approach to showing Dutch culture, unlike the typical science fiction and fantasy often used as a main source of inspiration for games. Most important, Hollandia sets an example how cultural heritage can usefully and uniquely be brought into any gaming project. Watch below the trailer of the game to get a better impression of the project! (and don’t be discouraged by the first 20 seconds that include some boring pre-trailer school logo animation- what follows is worth watching).

A nice Video documentary by Adobe, showcasing the process of Judging the last Adobe Design Achievement Award competition in California last summer, and featuring all judges- as well as some of the winning project.

By Tarek Atrissi

I was glad to take part of the graphic design week in Saudi Arabia, organized by Dar El Hekma college in Jeddah, and witness the first event of its kind in the kingdom. On one hand, discovering the local charm of another Arab city was very exciting on all levels: Looking at the beautiful old areas of Jeddah; documenting the graphics and typography on the streets; and viewing closely wonderful examples of the traditional Hijazi architecture and style. On the other hand, the conference itself, entitled “Tawasol”, was a stimulating event that triggered a considerable local interest. Speakers included high profile international designers, design critics and communication experts such as Jonathan Barnbrook, Tea Triggs, Anja Lutz and Adbusters media foundation.
I personally enjoyed very much the lecture of Lebanese architect and artist Nadim Karam and his concepts and projects often narrating the “dreams of cities”: Projects such as the Archaic Procession urban art installation in Beirut Central District in 1997, a series of gigantic sculptures which I recall positively as a very curious addition to the city during my study years at the American University of Beirut. The talk of UAE national Mohammed Harib was highly appreciated by the audience: He is the creative mind behind the Middle East’s pioneering animated 3D series, Freej, a project celebrating the culture and tradition in the UAE through animated characters that literally became national heroes across the Emirates.

I gave a lecture and a workshop at the conference. The lecture was a critical look on emerging graphic design practice in the Arab world today. The workshop followed the same one day course module I gave in Kuwait a week earlier, consisting of a typographic lettering exercise that invited senior and junior graphic design students to “design” an Arabic word of their choice. Sketching the graphic and typographic endless possibilities of a specific word lead to very interesting results, some of which are previewed below. They ranged between calligraphic solutions, geometric ones, and freehand lettering style.

Selected work from the workshop. Top, right to left: Zainab Al Mashat, Nouf Ahmed Dahran , Marya Bakhsh, Alaa El Khereiji, Amnah Naghi, Amna Kamel.

All in all, I was most impressed I think by seeing the emerging graphic design scene in Saudi Arabia and the motivated young generation of local Saudi female designers highly interested in design and typography. It was not surprising then to pick up a local graphic design magazine, “Design”, initiated by one of the graduates of the graphic design department of Dar El Hekma college.