Caramblogage

A while back, i posted a question that had been haunting me for a few weeks on twitter: what use is a graphic designer in a revolution? Far from being a trick question, I was, through reading blogs and magazines, to find out that I am not the only one asking myself this. Not only was I not the only designer with Arab roots to be stuck in Germany during the arab spring, or whatever this period of middle eastern history end up bein called, I was not the only one feeling just a wee bit useless. Nadine Chahine, type designer extraordinaire, started producibg snippets of type in commemoration of the Egyptian revolution. A guy in the states turned a picture of a muhagabba doing the v- sign into a vector poster a la sheppard fairy. Designers in egypt created posters, type and websites. I know of one person who made stencils in Germany that were later sprayed on walls in Tunis in support of their revolution. Someone made a crumpped Kathafi poster for reporters without borders. Even thou

After politics, culture. Photo credit: Sarah Carr, 2011 We're organising an exhibition at the Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt as part of a Panel featuring, amongst others, Khaled Kahmisi,  Noureddine Ben Redjeb and Volker Perthes. It will feature pictures by Tamboly, from Berlin and Egypt, Timur El-Hadidi and Sarah Carr from Cairo and Selim Harbi from Tunis. The Panel starts at 12:00 on Sunday, the 27th of March. It's free! 

I set them, so I endorse them. Also:

One of the happiest times for anyone is when months of research and various prototypes lead to a tangible result. Between all the revolting and exhibitions, one of my main projects has been this volume in  four parts (a flipbook with head, middle and feet plus an appendix).  To arrive at the final result, a ringbound 112x125 booklet with a gated cover, I went through three black and white and two coloured prototypes, two of which you will find below. I was trying to avoid a ring-binding, however experimentation showed me that it would be a difficult book to open with a sown back. My second goal was to have the book and the cover bound together, which was possibly even easier with the ringbound version than with the sown. Though the sown version is more elegant and I may attempt to make an 6th version with different materials and better print, paper & binding.  Soo… Documentation pictures! V3: Still black and white, but the binding is almost final.  V4: An attempt at fixing

I'm very happy to announce a real-life event for a change: The photo exhibition Egypt: Faces collects pictures shot by photographers in Cairo and Berlin during the process of the January revolution. It gives a face to the Egyptian people on Tahrir and beyond, highlighting their problems, joys and fears.  It opens on the 10th at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. And you're all invited ;)  You can see some of the pictures on display there in this photo gallery by Tamboly