Launched by Tarek Atrissi Design (www.atrissi.com) in 2005, this blog is the professional and personal visual and design diary of the Netherlands based design studio. We archive in it some of our observations in visual culture, design, typography and type design in the Arab world- through personal, commercial and education projects and activities we are involved in.

The website of the office of Tarek Atrissi Design can be seen on www.atrissi.com

Born in Beirut, Tarek Atrissi has worked and studied in Lebanon, The Netherlands, Qatar, Dubai and the United States. He Holds a BA in Graphic Design with distinction from the American University of Beirut; a Masters of Arts in Interactive Multimedia from the Utrecht School of the Arts in Holland and an MFA in Design from the School of Visual Arts in New York- where he studied under people like Steven Heller, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister.

His work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and is in the permanent Design collection of the Affiche Museum in Holland. His projects were featured in major international design magazines and books worldwide . His awards include the Type Directors Club’s, two Adobe Design Achievement awards in 2002, the Aquent Design award in 2003 as well as four IBDAA99 awards. He was selected in 2005 for Print Magazine’s Twenty under Thirty, the international review for the most achieved Visual artists below the age of 30.He is the co-author of “Visual Narratives from Arabia” published by Unesco in 2007. He is the founder of www.arabictypography.com, the online communication platform for Arabic Type, and is a frequent guest speaker in several universities and design seminars across the world. Atrissi has taught at the American University in Dubai, at the Virginia commonwealth University in Qatar, and at the the Art, Design and Technology Masters Program of UNESCO in 2005. He is an ambassador at the Design connection Eindhoven Ambassadors board in Holland.

He is currently principal of his own design studio, Tarek Atrissi Design (www.atrissi.com), based in the Netherlands and serving a variety of clients, big and small, in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The Studio’s multi-disciplinary scope of work covers all kinds of visual communication- with a primary focus on cross cultural design and on developing a modern Typo/Graphic Arabic Design. His projects included designing the visual identity for the country of Qatar in 2004 and the masthead and identity for Al-Ghad Newspaper in Jordan. The office’s typographic devision was launched recently, specialized in designing custom Arabic Typefaces. Their designed typefaces include corporate fonts for Newspapers, TV stations, major corporations and sporting events- such as the custom font for the Asian Games (Doha 2006); Custom TV fonts for Jordan Satellite Television ATV; as well for the custom lettering for Etisalate, Dubai’s main Telecommunication company, among others. Tarek was a creative director for Meta Design, and has consulted with international branding firms such as Wolf Ollins (UK), Futurebrand (NY), interbrand (UK), Turqouise Branding (UK), Brandinstinct (UK), among others.