Designification

Design-ification / De-signification

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My first public #debut at #annualshowcase of #emiratesfineartssociety #noahsark (at Sharjah Art Museum)

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Simplify

Logos, hashtags, taglines... There are many ways of promoting a company, event or a product. Just because there are so many ways of developing a brand identity doesn’t mean that all of these methods need to be utilized.

For the final brief of Graphic Design Studio class, we decided to merge our hashtag and logo into one.

If there was a separate logo to the hashtag, it will burden the viewers to have to remember two things about the project. By having the logo of the project also be a hashtag, designers can concentrate on making one effective design that can serve both as a logo and a hashtag. 

The inspiration to do so for the final brief came from looking at MyDubai campaign. The hashtag is there logo. The design is very simple and eye-catching. It is memorable to the audience. Effective design doesn’t have to be complicated. Simpler things are harder to design to make it effective.

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Creating a mood board to sell your concept

For this week’s Graphic Design Studio class, everyone agreed on coming up with a concept for the time lapse video that is to be filmed on top of Burj Khalifa to illustrate the revolution of the Earth for educational purposes.

The concept I had for the promotional campaign of the video was to tie it to happy significant events of a person to the magical scientific discovery one would have through watching the video. 

Creating a mood board to sell my concept within a short amount of time was crucial. I wanted to have eye-catching videos that would explain my concept with one glance, and have supporting text somewhere on the board for people that wanted to know more details of my concept to read after. Therefore, I decided that the most important thing on my mood board was the images that captured the essence of my concept, then the hashtag that would be used to spread the campaign across social networking platforms. The detailed explanation of the concept is displayed using size 8pt type, which was sufficiently big when printed on a A3 board.

Prioritizing what elements of the mood board is important is crucial in creating the desired visual effect of manipulating the audiences’ gaze towards the things you would want them to remember your concept by.

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Render to see your imagination become a reality (digitally)

Our class received a brief to do a design for the wall facing the offices of New York University Abu Dhabi Institute. My partner Azhar conducted interview with the client and found out many details that weren’t included in the original brief that became extremely useful during the design process. The client wished or the design to not be covering the entire wall and that it be colorful. The Institute also wanted for the design to incorporate both the local and global culture. 

We decided as a team to use the Arabic character “ن” (pronounced “nun” and is used to represent the English “N” sound) in our design to stand for NYU’s “N”. We consulted NYUAD’s visual identity style guide for the color scheme that are used for the design. 

After creating the final design, we needed to see what it would look like in the actual space. We took a photo of the space with the empty wall and rendered the final design on top of it.

The process of rendering a simple image is not long. However, creating a rendering like the one above is worth more than a thousand words. It is more effective than having to try to explain what the dimensions of the designs are going to look like and how it would feel. It is the extra step that needs to be taken in the design process to sell your idea in the most effective way by putting your design in the specific context.

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Designing is harder than you think

On Monday, we had a guest speaker Elena Pasquinelli talking about visual illusions and the possibility of fabricating memory. Through series of videos on Youtube and Ted talks, she demonstrated how what we perceive are not exactly what they are, but are hugely dependent on the environment that the perceived object is placed under.

This is an image (taken from: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-31656935) of a dress that went viral earlier this year. The photo of a dress on the left is actually that of the dress in the catalog on the right. What colors do you see from the photo on the left? White and gold or blue and black (like the one on the right)? This is just one of many examples of how our eyes are not mere direct translations of what they actually are visually.

Her claim that designing, whether it be a logo, or interior of a space, is dictating how people perceive things was very interesting. Elena’s talk was an opportunity to rethink about what “designing” something actually means. Elena used an example of designing an interior of a classroom for primary school students. Above is her collection of our class’s ideas on things that need to be considered. It is very interesting how a lot of the things on the board concern what is required of the classroom in the perspective of the students. It is only natural to think that what we are designing has to be for the people that will be using the designed space. However, what we rarely consider is that despite the fact that we try to do so, it is hard to separate ourselves, the designers creating the space. The question then becomes, is it wrong to design something for a client with a little bit of ourselves in it? If we consider teachers as designers creating the space for the client, the primary school students that will be using the space, is it wrong to stand in the teacher’s point of view and put up posters of grammar rules on the wrong of the classroom because it will become “transparent” or ignored by the students after a while because they will eventually get used to its presence and hence will not learn from it?

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Designing a logo: Backdoor Records

The Graphic Design Studio class was approached by Backdoor Records, a new record and management company founded by Azzedine Djielil. 

Above is how the original logo looked like. The images are taken from the company’s Facebook page. The received brief indicated the new logo to be able to highlight the cunning, determined and creative aspect of the company.

First, I explored the brief by seeing how the company’s name looked using different typefaces. When looking at the bauhaus 93 font, I realised that there was a slit in the middle of the letter “B” and thought that it could be used to include the imagery of a door.

I continued to explore around different ways of creating a “door” within the letter “B”. For my own personal enjoyment, I decided to include the golden ratio in the arrangement of the letter.

There were many iterations of the piece, and some of them explored the possibility of including a 3D effect. However, I questioned the necessity of having these somewhat distracting effects and decided to go back to the basics.

As a result, this is the final version of the proposal for Backdoor’s new logo that I decided to settle on. It’s bold and simple, which means that it is identifiable. 

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Effective Typography

Image: Barbara Kruger - Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)

Barbara Kruger (1945 - ) is an American conceptual artist known for overlaying declarative statements on top of black and white photos. Generally her work addresses culturally set ideas about power, identity and sexuality. 

Kruger is consistent with her choice of font in her older and well-known works that accompany black and white photos: Futura bold italic. Her works illustrate the importance of choosing the “right” font: one that doesn’t disturb, but amplify the overall message of the piece. One cannot imagine using a serif font, for example, Trojan, instead of the chosen typeface - it would create a very different feel. The contrast between the black and white photography and the strong san-serif font sends out a very strong message to the audience of her artworks. With the help of red highlight, the words pop out, softly accompanied by a more general photo in the background.

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The first event organised by Al Jazeera's innovation and research department brought 86 hackers from 37 countries to Doha

Project NEAR gets listed among the 10 great ideas from the first Canvas Hackathon. 

NEAR is a mobile app that creates a customized radio station through voice control. Its prototype was made during the Canvas Hackathon held in Doha, Qatar.

My role in the team was to establish the wireframe and to build the front-end of the app according to the designed wireframe.

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Hunting type crimes

You might ask, after reading the title of this post, what is a type crime? An international brand name, when its products are introduced and exported to other countries, it is frequently transliterated or even translated into the language the countries use. 

This is an example. Coca-Cola, a well-known soda brand of The Coca-Cola company is transliterated into a multiple of languages in the picture above. Despite the fact that there is an advantage of the customer being able to identify with the internationally-renowned brand by being made to be able to read their name on the packagings, sometimes, this act of transliterating or translating the name of the brand can lead to disintegrating of the brand. What I mean by "disintegrating of the brand" is that the pronunciation of the brand name itself or even the font the packaging of its products matter when a customer is trying to identify with the brand. Thus, when a corporation fails to pay attention to the "minor" details of the fonts of the transliterated brand name, they can weaken the connection that the customers can make with the identity of the brand, thus committing the "type crime".

At the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, the Designing Abu Dhabi class hunted down these type crimes. 

This is a photo of the Daiso shop at the mall, an internationally known Japanese value store. The problem with this brand's transliteration of their name is, not only the fact that the font fails to match that of the original, but also the fact that they when through the unnecessary trouble of adding the word "ال", the Arabic equivalent of the English word "the". The brand's name is not "The" Daiso. Even if the brand's name was "The Daiso", why would the Arabic letters for "ال" have to be smaller than "دايسو", the Arabic transliteration for Daiso? 

Another type crime spotted at the mall would be the sign for the Subway shop, a well-recognized sandwich shop. The problem with this one must have stemmed from the attempt for the creator of the Arabic version of the logo to design the Arabic version to resemble the appearance to its original equivalent. One major problem with this logo is the fact that it ignores the way the Arabic language is written. The Arabic language, like any other language in the world, has rules. This particular sign is ignoring the language's rule of connecting certain letters together when used continuously in the word. Here, the "b" sounding letter "ب" is disconnected to the "u" or "wu" sounding letter "و", which it shouldn't be. The sign should be written "صبواي", not "صب واي". Also the last Arabic letter on the sign is supposed to be the letter "ي", thus creating the "ii" sound at the end of the word to create the "y" sound of the "way". However, in an attempt to make the last letter of the sign resemble the arrow shaped "S" in the original English version of the Subway sign, the Arabic letter "ي" has given up to maintain its original shape, thus reducing the readability of the sign. 

Some signs, it seams, go further and commit the bigger crime of giving up how the brand name is pronounced when transliterated into Arabic. 

Above is a picture of Ibn Battuta Mall's GAP shop. In the right sign of the photo, you can see the original English version of the brand name "GAP". Comparing that to the bigger Arabic equivalent in the photo, one might say that the style is generally kept consistent. However, this sign makes the big mistake of being pronounced as "JAP" in Arabic, not the intended "GAP". Although there is the obstacle of the Arabic language not having a letter that pronounces the English "g" sound, whether or not this gives permission for GAP to be pronounced "JAP" is debatable. 

The below are good examples of signs with Arabic transliterations. They maintain the style of the original brand name as well as paying a good respect to the Arabic language during the process.

But the best example of the shop sign of an internationally recognized brand name would have to be this one:

  The "tick" is visible from a mile away. Everyone can associate this distinct orange tick with the Nike brand. There is no need for Nike to write out their brand name, let alone transliterate it in Arabic. Nike's orange tick not only doesn't commit the type crime, but also it receives a gold star for being the most simple, yet so defined shop sign at the Mall.

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Localli: NYUAD Hackathon for the social good in the Arab world

Students, mentors and judges gathered in Abu Dhabi this February to develop programs for the social good of the Arab world. I was part of a team of 6, comprised of students and mentors from all over the world. 

During the 3 days of the Hackathon, we developed a website that promotes local business, volunteering opportunities and organic restaurants as well as the standard local attractions, called Localli. 

The logo is essentially the English word "locally" but instead of the "y" I have inserted in an Arabic letter "ي", which as a suffix means "my". Consequently, the world "locallي" means "my local"

The website gives badges to attractions if they are "local", "giving" and/or "organic".

And here are some screenshots of our website:

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For my final project of Introduction to Arts Practice, I did a series of portraits of my friends and myself. These are just a couple of examples (I gave away many to the subjects of the portraits).

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Here are some examples of line drawings that I did for my Introduction to Arts Practice class. The first one is done using Indian ink, and the rest are done using pencil. They have no shading in them to show that it is the line consistency that matters in making the objects drawn more realistic.

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Intern: NYU Abu Dhabi Athletics Department

From September to December 2013, I interned as a graphic design intern at NYU Abu Dhabi Athletics department. 

During my time interning, I helped structure and establish the "Athletes of the Month" nominations. 

I was also given the task of creating some posters for the Athletics events. Here are some examples:

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Tamkeen Challenge: Design a logo

Jason Harborow, from Tamkeen gave our design class a challenge - design a logo for the touch rugby team that he is passionately involved in.

Here are some sketches of initial ideas:

For the final version of the logo, we utilized the negative space to represent 2 warriors, a torch (a symbol of NYU) and a fire, to represent the fierceness of the warriors.

Here is the final logo:

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Being a visual designer

Being a visual designer is not just drawing creative illustrations and designs for products. A visual designer is all about providing a solution to a problem to a client, no matter in what format the brief is given. 

It's like this - in life, you face a lot of situations that you just have to "deal with". A brief is something you have to "deal with" for you to provide a solution for the client. This means that no matter how vague and confusing the brief is, a visual communicator must try to come up with a possible solution for the client. The journey to coming up with the most optimal solution can be a long and difficult one. But the truth is, a design brief is like a mini-version of a life-problem. And a design brief exercise can bring gifts of wisdom about life through practices. 

The two briefs for the final presentation on the 23rd of January, the grand finale of Designing Abu Dhabi course, were contrasting. The brief given by Virgin Galactic was one that necessitated us to be constructors of a dream, where as one given by TAMKEEN was something a visual designer would face on a regular basis. The Virgin Galactic brief forcefully pushed the boundaries of imagination whereas the TAMKEEN brief was a way of getting the precious experience of getting a teaser of what the rest of my life could be like if I was to continue to pursue a career of this area. 

No one, let alone myself, knows where I would be in the future. And it is this fact that allows me to romanticize my future and hold on to a vague hopefulness of becoming "successful". But what I know for sure now, after having completed this course, is that I have gained more tools of making this dream become a reality, no matter what dream it may be. 

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Knowing your limits

This is a story of a failure caused by not knowing your boundaries.

Shell, the world-renowned oil company, had released a campaign called "Let's Go". 

For Shell, it was their attempt in trying to make themselves seem like an environmentally friendly firm, emphasizing the fact that form them, not everything is about science. The "Let's go" statement implies their passion to build a more environmentally friendly and sustainable energy future. Despite their noble motivations, this campaign has become the classic tale of a marketing failure. 

The reason was this: they did not know their limits. The history of a firm is what determines its reputation. And it is this reputation that limits what kind of action a firm can take. For Shell, having had clashes with environmental activists before along with their infamous oil spill, suddenly turning environmental wasn't an option. The result of this was detrimental. 

The public scepticism in Shell going environmental has resulted in numerous parodies of their campaign posters being created, which eventually led to the company having to pull off the campaign. 

This short tale tells you the necessity to evaluate oneself when they are about to make important decisions, not just in a business situation, but also in life in general. Before making a life-changing decision, one should access whether they are capable of handling the possible outcomes about to come due to the decision and change - an important life lesson learned through the study of visual design.