Minimalism, cultural trends and a bunch of other intersting stuff

"Minimalism: A twentieth century art movement and style stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures."

- taken from www.artlex.com

Minimalism is a word that I came across about two months ago. Since then the concept is everywhere around me. As the definition explains, its about going back to the roots of it all. No more flashy designs or complicated textures. Or even diverse color palettes. Its about finding the core of the piece of art you're working on and sticking only to it.

Actually minimalism goes as back as the 60s and 70s when the concept emerged for the first time. But lately corporations are catching up with it. Look at the major players in the world now. Companies like Apple, Google, etc etc. Even Major websites like Facebook.com, Youtube.com, Gmail.com or even Wikipedia.com. They all emply minimalism in their designs and interfaces.

On the other hand, when you look at rivals of such websites. Sites like Hotmail.com or Myspace.com, you cant help but notice the quirky complex design of it. Maybe this is why more and more people are switching into gmail and facebook.

Compare the welcome page of Google.com to those of Yahoo.com or Msn.com. Quite a difference,huh? THERE IS NOTHING ON THE WELCOME PAGE. Just the search field.



Apple embraces the concept of minimalism fully. Its all over their products and ads. check their flag product, the ipod, the product that changed the whole music industry and launched the mp3 revolution. So what design would you use for a product that will change the way we listen to music? a simple white rectangle. Thats it. No flashy colors, (yeah sure they have it in a million colors now, but i am talking about the original ipod, the white ipod) no weird quirky "hip" design. Its as simple as you can get.

When you look at a product like the Zen by Creative. Its very obvious that the design is a ripoff. And this approach is all over their products, not just the ipod. look at the imac or ibook.

the ipod ads are another example of minimalistic approach. Its weird when u comapre the ipod ads to ads like those of the Playstation or the Xbox. You cant help but wonder about the different approaches taken. The ads for the PS or Xbox employ the latest and most cutting edge technologies. Spectacular graphics, cinematography and over the top concepts. On the other hand you have the ipod ads, which are basically silhouettes of people dancing and holding their ipods. Thats it. Nothing more. AND ITS SELLING LIKE NOTHING ELSE. You have to ask yourself, why? The answer, of course is minimalism.

Why is minimalism the key factor in the corporate world nowadays? I think it has to do with people getting sick and fed up of over-designed products. You see, in the past 10 years there have been a revolution in design software, and designers exploited this revolution as much as they can. So in the end people get fed-up. It was too much. Too much colors, too much design, too sophisticated interface. There had to be a backlash, and we are living it right now.

Even if you aren't aware of it, but I bet you are drawn to minimalistic designed products, and probably have one or two in your wishlist (iphone anyone?) coz u think they look cooler than their competition.

But i don't think this is the way it's going to be forever. I think in 10 years time we will get fed-up of too simple designs, and we will be looking for more visually stimulating designs. Visual feasts.

Also worth noting is the use of the minimalistc approach in literature. Its quite different than its design counterpart. In literature, the author uses very simple descriptions of characters and surrondings. Choosing to write only about events, and by this way the author invites the reader to choose the reaction that is unique to him, instead of imposing the author's reaction to the events. I know only of two authors who use this technique; Chuck Pallhuniak and Son'ala Ibrahim(not all of his writing though.)

As for the cinema, minimalistic storytelling has been around since forever, but mainly in European cinema, which we aren't so exposed to here in Egypt. Worth noting though is the movie Babel, which is the first mainstream film i saw that adopts a minimalistic plot, choosing to concentrate on themes and emotions instead.

And because we are living in a "less-is-more" world nowadays, we the awesome people at Ganzeer decided to implement this approach in the design of our new website, which is probably why its taking too much to finish (hey...minimalistic design takes much more time to get it just right, believe me.)

How To Kill Creative Blocks

I'm constantly asked how I overcome creative blocks, especially when I've got deadlines lined up and I just have to force myself to freakin' get to it. Since my approach involves more show than tell, I made video!

We Love Heroes' Hiro

The very comic book influenced hit NBC series, Heroes, had a huge enough impact on us to prompt giving Hiro Nakamura a little appearance in the motion graphics showreel we're working on. But instead of bending time and space, our Hiro alters his surrounding, which should provide for a pretty cool sequence. Snap shots to your right.

I hadn't had as much fun following a TV show as much I did watching Heroes, even with the first season's rather dissapointing anti-climatic ending. I'm dying to see the second season! The characters are so cool, each with their own agenda and backstory, and their stories are so inter-related and meet at the most unexpected points, very reminiscent of the stories I read in the superhero comics I grew up reading. That's not the reason I loved the series so much though. You just get so immersed in the stories and characters that you sometimes forget you're watching a show. All throughout the first season, me and my friends, who were never insane comic book fanatics, would get together at the Ganzeer studio to watch the latest Heroes episode. And if we had somehow managed to miss a few, we'd marathon through them together.

Tasem got so enthusiastic about it that he felt obliged to spread the Heroes frenzy all over. He gave my friend Ahmad Kamal a whole bunch of episodes to watch, gushing and screaming to Kamal of the series awesomeness, but because Kamal is rarely interested in anything other than cars and women, he never really felt inclined to rush into watching them. Until this one night he couldn't really sleep and had nothing else to do, so he popped in the first episode... and found himself continuing all the way to the fifth. Yup, all five episodes back-to-back. In one night.

From that point on, Kamal would join us at the studio for our Heroes nights.

And he who loved nothign but cars and women would qoute Hiro Nakamura in his regular speech patterns. All the time.

A Cool Title And A Deep Remark

I just couldnt help it, I look at mofa's posts and get jealous of the titles. They r too freakin' awesome. I cant think of anything as remotely cool as those titles. But i noticed a recurring theme; it has some sort of format. It goes like "A Cool Title" followed by "A Deep remark". Something like "Ganzeer is in Motion and in love with Simplicissiums". So i saved myself the effort and just wrote this title, hoping someday I'll be able to come up with a one of my own.

Anyway, lets get down to business. I am the latest addition to Ganzeer, following an ancient tradition in here that always invites other artists to chip in and help with the ongoing creative rebellious process. So I am sort of the new guy here, but this time i am here to stay and help to expand the awesomeness that is Ganzeer. Guess I'll start with some introductions then.

My name is Mohamed Motasem. Shortened Tasem. Like Mofa I was drawn from an early age to the world of comic books, films, books. But while Mofa concentrated on the visual part of things, I preferred the intellectual side. From an early age i had a passion for reading, which developed later in life to passion for writing.

So what will i be doing here? Mainly I am responsible for the film department in Ganzeer. A dept. that isn't officially launched...yet. And by film-making i mean more than just films. We Will be putting out Motion Graphics work, Short Films, Feature Films (hopefully in the future), TV Programs, Advertisments, Film Credits, and many many other things that all have one thing in common, the time factor.

Coz u see, I know Mofa from a long time, and always thought that his work lacked the time dimension. His work was screaming out to be animated and moved through time. And this is what I am here to do...among other things of course.

So currently like Mofa already said, we are working on our motion graphics trailer. Which i think will be a revolution in the whole motion graphics scene in the Middle East. Not a technical revolution mind u, but a "visually intellectual" revolution....whatever that means.

I'll be keeping u up to date with what we currently have in the pipeline in this new department here in Ganzeer. and meanwhile u can treat urself to infinitely small portions of the trailer on the site's main page.

Ganzeer is in Motion and in love with Simplicissimus

Me and Tasem are working on our first almost lengthly multi-scene motion graphics clip that will act as Ganzeer's showreel. Tasem, who will be helming all film-related projects Ganzeer will be involved in, sat over Adobe After Effects for a couple of weeks and really nailed down all the technical ins and outs of the software, so we're going about it with me handeling all design aspects and art direction and him executing all the animation to a T. And with me giving him 247 layers to animate in this one scene, boy is it anything but easy. Especially if you've got yourself a 10-scene clip! And the dude is dieting too. Poor dude. I can't imagine how I could do this stuff without my daily dose of homemade chocolate cake (thank you, Mariam, wuv you, Mariam).





Above are some screenshots from our second scene. You'll notice there's a poster of a red bulldog in one of them, that's a little cameo we put in there of this pre-20th Century magazine we learned about and fell in love with called Simplicissimus. We first read about it in the uber essential documentation on design history: Design Literacy; which my friend Ehab dropped my way a couple years back (thank you, Bob, wuv you, Bob). Simplicissimus was a satirical German weekly magazine started by Albert Langen in April 1896. Combining brash and politically daring content, a bright, immediate, surprisingly modern graphic style, Simplicissimus featured the work of German cartoonist Thomas Theodor Heine on every cover, and published the work of writers such as Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke.

The poster of the red bulldog staring menacingly through stone-cold white eyes, with broken chains hanging from its neck and sharp, spikey teeth eagerly awaiting to attack whoever dares it was used to promote the antibourgeois publication. The red bulldog symbolized the common people who were portrayed throughout the magazine as opponents to the ruling class.

Authorities back in the day used stern measures to muzzle the dog, but despite frequent censorship and periodic arrests, this illustrated tabloid rarely missed an appearance, and the red dog always stood poised on the posters on the walls to remind friend and foe that it would not be chained for long.

The graphic style of the magazine is so overwhelmingly ahead of its time and definitely something to look up to, even over a century later.

Daily Mirror Needs Colorist

David Pugh, cartoon editor of the Daily Mirror in London, UK is looking for a digital colorist to color the paper's football strip SCORER which appears six times a week. He is particularly interested in Egypt-based digital colorists and is offering 430 EGP a strip.

David is in Cairo this June, so if you're interested, getin touch with the man right away.

The Human Effect - by Akmal Shebl

So I get this email from an Akmal Shebl, a writer he says, wrote his first novel which is made available on Amazon.com. It's called The Human Effect, and it tells the story of two architects Lou'ai and Sammy; two young architects living in contemporary Cairo, both sharing a love for Salma, who is married to Sammy. The two architects compete in a competition for an architectural price for a new structure in Cairo, one they both hope will be an everlasting landmark, with as much impact as the Sphinx or the Pyramids.

That's just the setting, but the story runs much deeper than that. I don't usually pimp books I havent read, but reader reviews up on Amazon are all very positive and intriguing. Sammy's a very realistically-oriented person and his view of Cairo is one full of negativities; "(people) wake up everyday exhausted from the hatred the day before. They have bills to pay; kids to feed; jobs to keep; women to satisfy - men to satisfy. They have bosses they hate, parents they loathe and neighbors they wish to kill. They even hate their own selves." It is Lou'ai who sees the potential beauty of the city and of the dwellings, of the juncture between the living and the dead, and it is this dichotomy of view of Cairo that drives Shebl's story to its most surprising and satisfying end.

Or so the reviews on Amazon.com say.

What makes the book even more interesting is that it was self-published by Akmal via BookSurge, a self-publishing print-on-demand getup created by Amazon.com.

It's admirable to see this Egyptian dude writing his first English-language novel, self-publishing it and making it available on Amazon.com, and already getting a 4.5 star rating and many positive reviews from readers in the States, London, and Italy! It's very admirable.

Bow to the Hatem

Ganzeer.com has been getting quite a number of hits from the blog of hot illustrator supreme: Hatem. Dude's got Ganzeer linked in his list of Egyptian artists.

Hatem's a really great guy and incredibly capable illustrator. We collaborated together a couple years back on the beta issue of 8x8, a comics + short prose publication commenting on society and culture of which 2000 copies were printed to coincide with the opening of Cafe' Inch, the magazine's sole sponsor. It recieved overwhelming feedback, most from people who had never read comics before, which was really the intention of the publication. Unfortunately though, no issues were ever published after that and the magazine died shortly after one of the main partners of
Cafe' Inch had sold his share, resulting in a change of the cafe's management and administration which resulted in a quick death of both the cafe', and inevitably... 8x8.

Even though funding for the magazine was low, Hatem was uberly enthusiastic about it and pumped up some beautifully illustrated pages for the script I gave him, and wasnt even at any sort of hurry to collect his fees. He's really passionate about drawing, and wants nothing more in this world than to continue to evolve with his artwork and he's such a great fellow. I really wish I could work with the dude again, but under circumstances far more deserving of his skills and passion.

Hatem posts his work from sketch-to-finish on his blog. Don't stop checking it out for constant inspiration.

Weeping Sorrow

Soo it's been what? A little over a year since Ganzeer.com was updated, right? My bad, I'm really sorry and it's entirely my fault. The current update, what is now made available, obviously isn't what I've been working on for the past year or so, but I thought I'd have a little appetizer of sorts just before the main course is ready. But why on rotting Earth is the main course taking so effin' long? Well because it's biiiiig, I tell you, biiiiiiig! Huge!

Okay, so maybe that's not the only reason, or the main reason even, I confess. The thing is, I've been so caught up in various projects and whatnot, as well as re-evaluating my strategy and my priorities, furthermore developing my craft, as well as seeking to experiment within a variety of other mediums, all through long term projects, none of which the results will be eminent now.

However, I do promise that the new incarnation of Ganzeer.com, once it is ready, will be filled with all kinds of artsy fartsy goodness, and several web initiatives that will include visitor participation, much like the long halted Shakloh Mag.

Until then, me and my new partner in art, Tasem -who has joined me to helm all filmmaking-relating projects Ganzeer will be involved in- will be documenting our progress and such on here. And it will be awesome.