By Tarek Atrissi

Water bottle packaging for the El Hema Oasis Desert water.

El Hema, the Arabic fictive (yet real) version of the famous Dutch HEMA department store, is back again this year, with an exhibition (or rather a store) in Rotterdam. El Hema, originally an idea of Mediamatic, was organized this year through cosmopolis, in collaboration with the brand hotel, and we were glad at Tarek Atrissi Design to be commissioned for the design of the main graphic and information design work involved in the project.

Above: Preview of the visual identity of El Hema, brought more in line with the HEMA new image that has been continiously developing over the last year.

In 2007, the first El Hema project in Amsterdam organized by Mediamaric took an incredible press attention and was a big success: It was simply very unconventional to see a brand that is so Dutch, HEMA, taking a small twist and becoming in an Arabic form. A simple idea that reflects much more on the highly debated cross cultural integration and communication in the Netherlands. In 2007, we designed at Tarek Atrissi Design the Arabic logo of El Hema, working the Arabic lettering version to match the simple straight forward typographic Latin logo.

Above: Images of several items of the new El Hema collection, mostly typographic design solutions for intercultural concepts and ideas.

This year, with the concept slightly changed and a new wider line of products, our work mostly focused on the design of new products (Fashion and kitchen items), as well as a lot of packaging design for food and non food products, and retail and store interior design. We had a new briefing that slightly differed from the first concept we knew: As a successful idea, El Hema was carried as a concept to reinforce the richness of the intercultural living in Holland; but mostly was developed to be a successful business model, generating profit through sales of its unique products in order to support the grow of the collection, and the move the of the El Hema exhibition to other major cities in the Netherlands. The strongly cultural initial essence of the concept, had to be then combined with a business viability that will insure its continuous sustainability.

Artwork preview of some of the food products packaging. Shown above the Ksar Bahia and Musar wine Label design, as well as the Chocolate packaging.

Most of the items were very interesting to work on: Graphic and Typographic solution for wine labels, chocolate packaging, water bottles, Duo umbrellas (with fairuz’s famous rain song), imported food, and much more; all with an intercultural twist. The focus remained on making a balance between the initial El Hema identity and drawing a parallel line with the real HEMA look- that has changed a lot over the last year with the introduction of a revised look and feel.

Images and impressions from the actual El Hema Exhibition & store in Rotterdam.

El Hema project seems to always come with its own challenges and problematic issues. Amsterdam’s mediamaric exhibition was faced by an initial unpleasant reaction from the Dutch Hema department store. This year, the difficulties were faced by the fact that many organizations and parties were involved in the project, and not all of them shared necessarily the same vision on some key issues for the El Hema brand, particularly that the concept has moved from its initial “home”. Not to mention of course an incredible short deadline, by which an entire department store had to be designed!

By Tarek Atrissi

It has been an active end of the year, particularly with the lectures I have been invited to give at different international design schools and design conferences and events. Lecturing on design and visual culture has became a main part of academic activities, and I still find it an excellent opportunity to experience different design academic environments, but also a chance to meet other practicing designers and listen to their approach on design marked by different cultural and professional challenges.
In September 2008 I took part for the first time in the Society of News Design’s annual conference, held this year in Las Vegas. The three day’s conference offered exciting sessions in design, graphics, multimedia, typography, management and creativity, all with a bigger focus on Visual Journalism and design for the news sector. The conference was internationally driven, with several tracks and many sessions covering aspects of design that fit a wide range of interest. One of the lectures I enjoyed most was the talk of Andrew Devigal, “Telling data-rich interactive stories”, showcasing some outside-the-box case studies from the New York Times interactive approach to journalism. I Enjoyed as well the conference’s displayed selection of national and international archived newspapers, showing front pages of remarkable dates in history and forming a “mini news museum” in the hallways of the venue. On top of that, the conference had a special session dedicated to the Middle East, focusing particularly on the booming News Design industry in the Gulf. The track included Douglas Okasaki and Mohammed AlMezel from the Gulf news English daily and Ramzi Rajab from Al Emarat Al Youm Arabic Daily in the UAE. They presented the process of their newspapers’ current designs, as well as their views on growing and developing design scene in the Gulf. It was interesting as well to hear that the new design of the Khaleej times daily newspapr is the work of Paola Scher / Pentagram New York. My own lecture focused on Arab Visual Culture generally, and specifically going into the design for the news sector, and the typographic challenges and demands when designing News, either in print, TV, or in New Media, through case studies of projects we have developed at Tarek Atrissi Design.

From the Newspaper design archive displayed at the Las Vegas SND conference.

Another interesting lecture and workshop I gave was at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam; my second visit and involvement at the School in Rotterdam. The lecture and workshop were part of the “cultural diversity” week organized at the Visual Communication department of the school. Cultural diversity is a definition of the Netherlands nowadays, and maybe this definition is valid in Rotterdam more than anywhere else in Holland, where a large number of the “Moroccan”, “Turkish” , “Surinam” and “Antilleans” youth communities exist. Young people that are born and raised in Holland, yet considered as somehow foreigners (or “allochtonen”, the Dutch “untranslatable” word defining them). The student population at the Willem de Kooning Academy is not a reflection of the cultural diversity of the city of Rotterdam- generally the case as well in design schools overall in the Netherlands - suffering from the same lack of a more “hybrid” young student body. The workshop focused on analyzing the reasons behind this situation, and on thinking of innovative and creative methods to reach and attract the youth of the second generation immigrants in Holland; and make the WdKA in short and long terms steps a better reflection of the Dutch society.

Poster Series for Tarek Atrissi’s Lecture at SVA, September 2008. Designed by Sumayya Elsenan.

My trip in New York included two lectures at two of the most prestigious design schools in Manhattan, Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. It was great to be for the first time at Parsons; but of course being back at SVA, at the MFA Design program where I graduated from, was an exciting place to be as a guest speaker. There is a creative energy at the department that- even for an Alumni- boosts your design ambitions, inspiration and excitements. My lecture addressed to the first and second years students of the program, came as part of the ten year anniversary event of the MFA Designer as Author program. The event was marked by the publishing of Steven Heller and Lita Talarico’s new book, The Design Entrepreneur, which summarizes really the essence of the graduate program of the school, and includes some of the most successful entrepreneurial projects developed at the School. My favorite part of the event was the distribution of book specially designed for the 10 years celebration, entitled: MFA-Z; a 10 year encyclopedic history of the MFA Design at the School of Visual Arts. The Publication, beautifully designed by 04 graduates Sam Eckersley and Stuart Rogers (RED design), included all the info one can possibly think of for about the program: Students, Graduates, faculty, rumors, memories, locations, first day at school, class clowns, mentors, quotes, and many other humorous statistics and

informational diagrams.

Preview of the 10 year encyclopedic history of the MFA Design at the School of Visual Arts, by Sam Eckersley and Stuart Rogers.

Finally, back in The Netherlands, and in the occasion of concluding the Exhibition “Arabic Graphics: the work of Tarek Atrissi”- an evening of Arabic Typography was organized at the De Levante foundation in Amsterdam, which included a brief introduction to the topic by Titus Nemeth, followed by two presentations by Thomas Milo and myself. An online recording of all three talks can be found on the following link thanks to Kaveh Bazargan.
My last lecture of the year took place at the Utrecht School of the Arts, on the topic of design entrepreneurship. The new year, 2009, will start with a lecture in Kuwait city as part of the “Nuqat ‘ala Alhuroof” seminar in end of January. Always exciting to be back in the Gulf.

By Tarek Atrissi

The Atrissi-Sans Typeface is quickly taking a life on its own, and I am pleased to see it in use in so many large scale projects across the Arab world. Despite its recent and short release time, Atrissi-Sans font became our best selling Arabic font at Tarek Atrissi Design. The three weights font family was initially designed on a commission to match the Latin font Gotham, and was further developed at later stages and released earlier this year.

Al Wataniya airways chose the Atrissi-Sans font for usage as its main communication Arabic typeface, used on al printed, interactive and screen promotional and marketing communication material by the airline. The New Kuwait based airline is the latest new comer to a growing competitive Middle Eastern airline market. Its simple and straight forward identity required the use of geometric yet friendly modern Arabic typeface, which will work well with the Latin font Corbid, and Atrissi-Sans fitted all these requirements.

The new branding of the Egyptian Nile Channels (Drama channel, Sports channel, Life channel, Cinema channel) used as well the Atrissi-Sans font for all its on air and off air typographic communication. We have been involved in the design of Arabic fonts for television extensively for the last few years, and with the usage of Arissi-sans on all the channels of the major Egyptian Television network, this typeface is becoming highly visible and making our “on air” typographic presence in Arabia even wider and more exciting, and covering a significant part of northern Africa.
The actual logos of all channels used our Al-Ghad Arabic typeface for all the main channels’ signatures.

Both Al Ghad typeface and the Atrissi-Sans arabic font can be ordered by contacting us directly at Tarek Atrissi Design.

By Tarek Atrissi

Earlier this year we designed a custom Arabic font for the new BBC Arabic TV channel. A similar yet different project came our way afterwards at Tarek Atrissi Design: Designing a unique Farsi font for the new BBC Farsi TV channel, which will officially start broadcasting later this year.

Above: Preview of the Persian font designed for BBC Farsi, and a preview of its on-screen usage.

Despite dealing with a similar script; and with the same client, the recent Farsi type design project took a very different path from the previous Arabic type project. Certainly, we learned from the process of the Arabic font: Learned more on the process of work with BBC; on the testing and technical issues accompanying the project; and on the context in which the font will be used and the goals it wanted to achieve. We also learned from the simple experience of watching BBC Arabic today, and seeing the outcome of our work “in use” in the daily news reporting. All this of course affected our approach to this similar project, and made us work on it with a supportive experience. Most important, the brief given to us by the Persian Editorial team was very different from the brief of BBC Arabic, if not opposite. The unique font that was required to be developed for BBC Farsi needed to be “subtle”, not visually imposing or with a strong character and being hence “transparent” to the reader and not calling undue attention to it. It needed then to follow the traditional and commonly used Farsi Typefaces in Iran, for it not be a visible and strong change of type style for the average viewer. The typeface still needed to look modern however, despite being inspired from the traditional. It needed to be designed to address a better legibility, particularly on screen resolution, and to work smoothly with the on-screen layout and information design of the new channel, particularly with relatively short ascenders and descenders.

Above: Sketches and images from the process of the Farsi type design project

The result is a new low contrast typeface with a contemporary look and feel and with open counters; optimized for best usage on TV screen; A typeface supporting Arabic and Persian languages, and ideal for usage for good legibility and a subtle modern character. The font is not exclusive for BBC and hence will be take a life on its own, beyond its life on the Farsi News Screen. Details on licensing this typeface will follow shortly.

By Tarek Atrissi

I have been for the last six month advising and guiding masters students at the Gaming Design department of the Utrecht School of the Arts in Holland, supporting them both in their final year projects and their supportive narratives (thesis). “The Big friendly Giant”, a project by two of my students, David Smit and Joeri Lefevre, was an interesting project in research, goals, concept and process of development.

Sophie and the Big Friendly giant; the main two characters developed for the Children’s target group, age 7 to 9. By David Smit- Utrecht School of the Arts.

The Project aimed at creating a fictional franchise around the “Big Friendly Giant”, the children’s book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, first published in 1982. Franchising is becoming very common in the Gaming industry, almost every successful video game becomes a full franchise. The need to think of the possibilities of franchising, right from the beginning of the conceptual and design process, becomes a pressing issue should the large and varied target group of a future franchise is to be properly reached. The goal of the project (and the research behind it) was then to create a user centered visual franchise development model that on one hand emphasize more on user involvement (hence on validated design decisions); and that on the other hand set clear guidelines on how to define clear visual design principles that allow unlimited growth of the visual design into different medium while insuring always quality and coherence of products.

Preview from the products developed as part of the fictional Big Friendly Giant Franchise. Lunch Bags and Comic book based on defined Visual and illustration Style.

The project became then the case study for the franchising model created. The students decided to define two very different target groups to address while developing the project: Children of the age of 7 to 9 and adult gamers. They conducted then a comprehensive research on both target groups, with working sessions with children in primary schools, giving them as users the ability to express their views and ideas on the Big Friendly Giant story and taking their input as a main inspiration for facts leading to design decisions. Similar research was conducted on adult players, and eventually each of the students developed the visual guidelines for each of the target groups: Joerie defining a simplified expressive style for the children; and David defining a dark explicit style for the adult gamers. Eventually, both students exchanged the target groups and each created a set of products based on the visual identity guidelines defined by the other, in order to test as well the efficiency of their defined visual styles. A comic book, Lunch pack, and a Nintendo DS game were designed for the Children. For the adult gamers, a comic book, an energy drink, and a condom package were designed as part of the franchised products of the Big Friendly Giant.

Preview from the products developed as part of the fictional Big Friendly Giant Franchise. Lunch Bags and Comic book based on defined Visual and illustration Style.

Some previews are shown in this post of the end result of this project. Each year, I am asked by Print magazine to nominate three young designers for the magazine’s yearly prestigious “20 under 30″ competition, a selection of some of the most talented upcoming visual artists worldwide. I have given my votes for this year for Joeri Lefevre and David Smit, for their wonderful work on this project that effectively combined research, theory and practice in Visual Design for the gaming industry.