Caramblogage

We are now in January 2018. After soliciting sketches form another graphic designer, the association got back in touch with me, not satisfied with the suggestions they received. My brief changed slightly, to include a graphical element, in addition to typographical branding. "Make it like Bosch, or Siemens". The trouble for me, from a graphic point of view, is that neither Bosch, nor Siemens, has a bilingual subtitle that needs to be included in the branding. This is a challenge on several levels: the first one being that the client needed to be made very aware that they will be displaying their logo at small sizes and that there are only so many pixels in a logo that is 50px high. The same thing applies to print, though to a lesser degree- tiny print still has a higher dot density than most screens, can therefore smooth a font better. Most of this can be solved with vector graphics, but not all browsers support them. The second one is that I have done some research...

This time jump takes us a couple of months into the future- it's December 2017. At this point, I've been making subtle, well-recieved hints that the current logo does not represent the association adequately for a while, so I'm a very happy person when the call to get on it comes in. We know that part of next years' activities will include the design and development of a new logotype for the association, without knowing exactly where that road will lead us. Sometimes, I enjoy this kind of open brief, the kind that gives you the destination, but no map, or landmarks to orient yourself by- it allows experimentation, a lot of which will be done on my own time, and leaves an open question as to the result of the endeavour. It brings with it the risk of a longer than expected development process , many communications and course-corrections, but usually a satisfying reward and the journey, though arduous, is more adventurous. In this part, I won't say too much more...

We now find ourselves at the end of 2017, at the inception of a new project: Almanya auf Arabisch, which is conceived as a series of workshops in and around refugee camps, targeted at Arabic-speaking residents interested in integrating in Germany. And I have a written brief detailing what the design is supposed to communicate to a number of target audiences- when working with NGO's this is a rare and precious thing to hang on to. This occasion was enriched by detailed discussions around exact design placements, some serendipity in transparencies and the colour palette we had established over the last year. We decided early on that the Logo would include alphabetical and cartographical (fancy for: a map) elements. I still find the map questionable, as it delineates a geographic border which does not represent the breadth of its population and inhabitants in their entirety. But it is an understandable graphic representation which does not include beer, sausages, Lederhosen or...

Over the course of the year that followed, we put out a number of print products, oriented around the colouring and visual style of the guide- again, having set that precedent to follow, we found it to be more expedient not to reinvent the roundness of the wheel every time, but to try to make a better wheel every time. 2016 did not bring more publications, to my disappointment (and some relief- those things are hard work), but it did provide several opportunities to play around with what we had already developed, and see how it dealt with the ever-changing contexts. And so followed a year of banners, flyers the aforementioned reprint of the "Best Practices" guide. Without going into too much detail, I think I can describe this period as business as usual- we had a certain basic vocabulary established, and familiar with that, we expressed ourselves through it and adapted it into new shapes and contexts.   Throughout year, we realised that the logo we had sta...

One of the Grassroots Projects from Egypt that I think needs to be mentioned and supported is the 7'alti Feloul Campaign.  Aimed squarely at giving individual citizens the tools to spread awareness to the Remnants (Feloul) who still support the NDP/ Mubarak regime, through videos documenting the misdeeds of said system. I was asked, almost by accident, to develop a logo for them. In Berlin, with Hanaa el Degham, we came up with a couple of ideas, documented below.