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/

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).

Judges of the ADAA competition with Adobe and Icograda staff, and images of the judging process. (photography by Sean Teegarden)

Judging the ADAA 200 awards was such an exciting experience. Not only we got to do the judging at the Adobe headquarters in San Jose, and I got to meet the other judges that have each such an impressive and inspiring career, but we also got the chance to see a lot of very, very good work. I can’t share the work of the winners, as these will be announced and showcased at the Icograda World Design Congress in Beijing, China. But it is something to look for. The Adobe Design Achievement awards became the biggest design student competition around the world, since starting in 2001. It is open to almost all countries around the world, and I think that every students should participate in it because it does not require making specific work, but it is just about submitting work already done and developed as part of your education. I was glad to see several entries from the Arab world or with an Arabic flavor- and somehow disappointed to see very little work submission from Holland.

On a personal level, it was thrilling to be involved in the ADAA from the other side: I was a student winner in 2002 in two categories, and have gone through the competition process from the start all the way to the end. Being on the judging side completed the picture for me in experiencing this event, and in understanding further how a design work in a specific category, such as Print or Application design, can shine and be an exceptional work among another 2000 entries! Mostly however, winning projects can be described in few words: A solid concept, well designed and well presented, and of course with good typography.

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.

By Tarek Atrissi

We have responded to the invitation to participate in the competition to design the poster for the 31st edition of the Mediterranean Film Festival of Montpelier (Festival international du Cinéma Méditerranéen de Montpellier). I am usually not eager to participate in design competitions, I feel these are many time more abusive than pitches: Clients tend to get the most amount of creative solutions done for “free” before choosing their favorite design- and hence eliminate any possibility for a healthy design process which usually involves a continuous communication between the client and the designer insuring progressive work development and resulting in a good final outcome. However, in this case, the organizing committee of the festival seemed organized and professional, and have rationalized the need and reasons for making this as an open competition. And of course, the elements of the competition seemed very appealing: A poster; a film festival; and a Mediterranean city!

We presented several proposed designs and our poster design shown above ended up being selected as the winning entry. It is now used as well as the basis for all promotional material for the festival. What made this specific design win? I didn’t get to see the work of other designers, but I know that we had some other interesting proposal which were more typographically driven, since I am very interested in visually expressing Mediterranean typography. The design based on the curious narrative photo of the 50’s style female model seemed to be the most different and eye catching to the event organizers, who felt this represents the festival image best despite it being different from the posters style developed for the last 30 years. Not surprising, there is something magical about having a woman on a poster, particularly when it becomes part of a graphic and typographic layout and at the essence of the design treatment; as opposed to being used under a “sex-sell” approach. I am surprised to see how many of our designed posters actually revolve around the graphic and typographic exploration of a woman’s illustration or photograph. A topic that can be explored on its own, particularly when it comes to the notion of the use of the woman as an element in Graphic Design, specifically in the Arabic side of the Mediterranean world.

By Tarek Atrissi

I just returned from a short yet a very productive visit to Kuwait, where I gave a public lecture and where I conducted two workshops: one for the students at the American University in Kuwait; and another one open for professional practicing designers. All part of the Nuqat ‘ala el Hurrouf conference, a new and promising event that is very much needed in the country. The theme of the event focused on one hand on Arabic design and typography, and on the other hand on creative Arabic copywriting for designers.
One day workshops are always very challenging to plan, and for this event I came up with a new assignment of Arabic lettering to explore with the participants. Between the art of classic traditional Arabic calligraphy and the contemporary digital Arabic type design skills, lies the discipline of Arabic lettering, a task often in the hand of graphic designers in the context of Branding, logo design and title design. This workshop consisted then of a typographic exercise inviting designers to focus on one Arabic word, and to explore it typographically in all possible visual ways. The focus was to try to “design the word”: to look beyond the letters and experiment with sketching the word in order to give it the most unique and memorable shape.

Workshop work by Sara Al Falah (top) , Noura Al Naggar (middle) and Muneera Al Qinaie.

The results were very exciting and I share here a selection of the exploration on the Arabic word “Thaqafa” (culture) and other sketches of different words. The practical side of the workshop was backed up with a presentation of case studies that rationalized and presented different methods and approaches that designer can follow as they work with Arabic lettering.

Thanks to Khalid Al-Growi, I collected some charming vernacular printed advertizing material from Kuwait, material that is always interesting to look at and study its typographic and graphic old style treatment.

Vernacular printed advertizing work from Kuwait.

I always enjoy returning to the HCT colleges in Abu Dhabi to conduct the yearly workshops for the graphic design students at the Women’s college. With the first and second year students, I give a one week workshop offering introductory design courses that are essential skills in my opinion for any designer aiming to work in the Arab world. The first workshop focuses on creating Arabesque patters and on exploring the art of creating Arabic geometric patterns. The second workshop consists of an introduction to the use of Arabic calligraphy in design. Students are taught a basic overview of the general Arabic calligraphic styles and are then asked to find local calligraphers in Abu Dhabi: Each student will brief the selected calligrapher and art direct his process, to eventually use the commissioned artwork in a printed piece the student will design. Besides enjoying the final work developed by the local students, it is always exciting to discover through the students some of the hidden talented Arabic calligraphers in Abu Dhabi, and encouraging the students to bridge a working relationship with them.

Selected work from the workshop. Above: work of Fatima Al Baloushi. Below: Work of Sheikha al Marzouqi

By Tarek Atrissi

We travel, and always look at the street typography that defines the character of every city and new urban environment we experience. I enjoyed documenting the street graphics and typography in my latest trip across Panama, and so did Hilda in her travel in Venezuela. A quick preview shown in the images below, giving a taste of the rich typography in central and Latin America.

Preview of street typography from Panama.