Recapping: Shatana International Workshop '09

So it's been over a month since I returned from Jordan, and of course, I am very much detached from the entire experience now. My first week after my return, I must say, I was very much in a bit of a zone; lots of sitting around, staring blankly at nothingness, and presumably thinking about important shit.

But the Cairo hustle and bustle eventually got the better of me, and I really haven't had the luxury of blank staring at nothingness or thinking about important shit since. Instead, I've been caught up in non-stop working; either pumping out commercial work, sitting in meetings, or working on enhancing my studio space: like installing shelves, prepping up the drawing table, getting a desk, organizing files, building a side table; that sorta thing.

I'm still not done with my covering of the whole Shatana Workshop. I just never got around to it while I was in Shatana, not only due to the limited internet access situation, but also because I was actually busy working at the workshop. No really! And then of course there was getting caught up in real life upon my return to Cairo.

Luckily though, I saved everything Shatana related in a nice folder for when the time comes that I have a clear enough head to write all about the experience. And so here it is; the time has come.

I'll take this back to
July 8, 2009:
Meeting a Real Calligrapher

when we all paid a visit to Irbid, the closest big city to Shatana and funnily enough, the second biggest city in all of Jordan, right after Amman, the capital, which holds first place. The second biggest city, although rther noisy and packed when compared to Shaana, still seems like more of a beach town when compared to my hometown Cairo.

I decided to try and find me a proper calligrapher there. Emad, our designated truck driver, pointed me in the direction of a little calligraphy shop. After a little chitchat with the shop owner over what I had in mind, he advised me to go talk to another guy who owns a shop on the same street. One of the shop employees was present and he had me call up the owner/master calligrapher person. A little while later, together with the shop employee (named El Masry), I found myself visiting this hot shot at his home, and as it turns out, this stuck up master calligrapher who doesn't go to work is the recipient of a 2nd place award in last year's international calligraphy competition. This year, he's hell-bent on winning 1st place.

Master calligrapher Abu Ayyad with Iz Oztat on Shatana's Open Day, July 17 2009

So I tell him about my project which he finds interesting, and we bounce some ideas and sketches back and forth, but it's apparent my concept is far from complete; he advises me to sit and work on it a bit more, get away from distractions and flesh it out some more. The closer it is to completion, conceptually and practically, the better it wll be for him to recreate it in calligraphic glory. I agree.

What was really interesting though was how a lot of our talk involved the work of other calligraphers; those he admired and those he felt introduced new exciting things to calligraphy, usually very subtle things that involved a simple shift in brush, or further involving the type of ink in the actual form of the letters. It became apparent that there's this whole cult of calligraphers on a pretty global scale, who all know each other's work, build upon it, and compete. A cult I was never aware of.

In the cab on the way back from the calligrapher's place, El Masry pointed out a couple of signs their signage shop had made: horribly designed print signs, complete with bevel and emboss and multi-color heaven. So sad. El-Masry tries to reason that the market demands this type of thing and that hand-made calligraphy is not a money-making artform. I tell him there must be a way to link the two, fill the gap. He tells me about a client for women's wear who asked for a photo of a veiled girl on the sign. I try to tell him about how photo placement and its involvment in the layout of the sign can make all the difference in the world, or perhaps even the client could've been convinced to let him transform the photo into more of an elegantly illustrated image of chique elegant strokes.

He contemplates.


July 9, 2009:
The Characteristics of the Shatana Typeface

After meeting with the calligrapher I started thinking more about exactly what it is I wanted out of the typeface I want to develop for this Sign Language project, the typefact I've appropriately decided to name: Shatana Typeface.

These characterstics boil down to the following:

1) The font must be clearly readable from an appropriate distance, used for signs.

2) For further simplification, any one Arabic letter that usually appears in more than one form (it's common in Arabic, like the Jeem, Ha2, and Kaf, for example), if its possible to develop one form for it that works regardless of its placement, then that would be ideal.

3) All dots above the line are aligned to the same height, which is also the height of "tall letters" in the typeface (Alef, Kaf, etc). All dots below the line are also aligned at the same height below the light, which are also aligned with all "sub-line" letters in the typeface (Waw, Ra2, etc.). All mid-sized letters in the typeface are aligned at the same height (Dal, Ha2, Meem, etc.)

4) The font should try to retain the romance of original Arabic calligraphic qualities. Introducing this signage project to the isolated village of Shatana definitely suggests modernizing and enhancing, but that does not mean totally letting go of certain important traditions and a way of life that differentiates this isolated village from bigger more popular cities. That aspect should be expressed in the look and feel of this new typeface imposed upon the village's public space.


July 10, 2009:
Developing Basic Forms of the Shatana Typeface

Based on the above characteristics, I start developing the basic forms of the letters accordingly.


I take my little doodles to Master Calligrapher Abu Ayyad in Erbid who thinks he can work with them and come up with something slick. He needs a day to make a first rough draft, which we can look at and make notes and adjustments to, and then 3 days to proceed to finishing the final draft of the font.


July 11, 2009:
Shatana Typeface: First Draft


Abu Ayyad's idea of a first draft is apparently writing "bismellah al rahman al raheem" using this new writing style, which is good, not all bad. It tells us how the font will work in the construction of words and sentances and where it may need improvement.

And indeed, I make some ammendments which he agrees with. He'll have the entire alphabet, properly calligraphed, with all necessary usage guidelines ready for me on the 13th.

Oh and he makes me a little gift that reads "Mohammed Fahmy the Innovator" in beautiful Arabic calligraphy.

"Mohammed Fahmy the Innovator" by Abu Ayyad


Another one of Abu Ayyad's gifts: a not so good rendition of the Ganzeer logo.

And yet another slick gift from Abu Ayyad!

July 12, 2009:
Signs Are Not Just Type

For the shapes of the signs themselves, I developed 3 basic shapes: circle, rectangle, and like... like a rectangular arrow. Circles are for important notices, colored in white+red+optional black. Rectangles are for basic announcements (like reaching Shatana, colored in pink, or environment-related, colored in green of course). Arrows are for directions to places inside the village (like a church, mini-market, or cheese factory, all colored in blue+white).

I also came up with the idea of introducing a sort of public sitting area which would have a yellow+black circle sign to go with it.

Emad takes me to the carpenter in Al Husun who agrees to make me 13 signs for 80 Jordanian Dinars (624.5 Egyptian Pounds) which is not bad considering the size of these babies (pole = 210 cm high x 10 cm thick / actual sign = 105 cm wide x 45 cm high x 1 cm thick / 90 cm diameter for circular signs). Not to mention that he agrees to deliver them all on the same day!

This, as a fact, would never, ever, ever be possible in Cairo. Ever.


July 13, 2009:
Shatana Typeface Calligraphed

It's beautiful.

As soon as Ayyad presents me with his final renditions of the Shatana alphabet, I feel a euphoric joy. Just going through page after page of letter by letter, each clearly illustrated as a stand alone letter and when combined with other letters whether its at the beginning of the word, the middle, or the end, measured entirely in relation to the dots of the font. It's exactly how I pictured it, if not better, all for just 50 Jordanian Dinars.

And if that wasn't enough, he even makes me ANOTHER gift. A fantastic calligraphic art piece featuring my name, which when you concentrate, you can tell was made with so much more care and dedication than the first one. It's very beautiful.

I let it sink in and towards the end of the day, I see some changes could still be made to some of the letters when put in application, especially if turned into a proper, usable computer font.


July 14 to 16, 2009:
Making the Signs

The actual process of making the signs was an entirely different project all together. It involved several phases all on its own.

1) Designing the Signs: Tracing and vectorizing the letters from the Shatana Typeface Guideline booklet developed by Abu Ayyad, and using the letters to construct the words on the signs and combine the words with proper iconography to go with it.

1. public seating area .2. grasshopper calling, because in a lot of areas in the village you can here the electric-surge-sounding sounds of grasshoppers coming from the fields . 3. bus/minibus/truck stop, because most of the times its not really a bus .4. mini market .5. party hall .6. church .7. dairy products


some signs i never got around to actually making due to time constraints
left to right: 1. people passing through, because the people still live in Shatana according to a village mentality, so its normal for people to walk anywhere, cross a road at any point whenever they see fit, but because cars have also been introduced to the village, its not hard for someone to get hurt when crossing a street without paying attention. i felt a sign like this was mandatory. shame i never got to it. 2. harsh slope, because the village is on the hills and some of the slopey roads are seariously impossible to climb. 3. evil dog, because a lot of the village people owned some seriously vicious guard dogs who would bark non stop at passersby without being tied to a leash.

2) Turning Designs to Stencils: The best way to go about doing that is to have the designs "electro-cut" through vinyl at a vinyl-printing shop. The first "calligrapher" I met at Al Husun, the one who turned out to be a graphic designer, he had his own little electo-cut machine at his home, so I had him take care of this part for me.

3) Painting Signs: For the signs to look official, like real signs, they needed a nice, smooth, and shiny finish, to make them resemble metal, like most government-installed signs. To do this, I -with the help of Rafic Nasreddin, Iz Oztat, Jeanette Gaussi, and Youmna Chalala- had to sand the wood first, paint generously with a brush, flatten it out with a roller, let it dry, sand it out again, paint with a brush again, flatten out with roller again, and then let it dry.

4) Stencilling Designs on Signs: The stenciled adhesive vinyls are then stuck onto the signs. This I probably would have never been able to pull off without the awesome help of Salwa Aleryani. You then spray-paint evenly and appropriately. Let it dry, and then detach the vinyls to reveal the sign in its finished glory.



July 15, 2009:
Being Screwed

One day left till Shatana Workshop's big "Open Day." and I'm still not finished yet. I was planning on finishing everything today but of course an obstacle had to pop out of the no where. In this case; a migrane. Medicine, food, relaxing; nothing seems to work. It looks like 3 days of sniffing paint, tinner, and getting it all on my skin in multiple locations over-intoxicated my body. Or maybe I'm just a wuss.

Another obstacle that presented itself today: harsh winds, which blew all kinds of sands, dusts, and miniature particles on anything I had covered in wet paint.

Also my lack of painting experience seriously shows. It took me a few tries and screw ups to figure out the right techniques and materials.

My biggest obstacle of all is trying to keep my brushes and buckets clean. After killing a couple of brushes and a roller, I made sure I had a bucket of water close by at all tmes. Didn't work. Neither did a bucket of tinner. Nor did soapy water.

Fuck it, let the brushes die. I just want to finish my signs already.


July 17, 2009:
Shatana Workshop - Open Day!

Because of my very well developed Egyptian genes, I was of course only done with my signs at the very last minute: at exactly 4:00 pm on Friday July 17, which was the exact time of Open Day's opening!

Of course because fixing the signs into the ground would've been more time consuming than possible, I ended up -with the awesome help of Mohsin Harraki and Emad- tying the signs onto street poles using wires, and it worked perfectly.

There was a bit of skepticism as to whether or not the new Shatana Typeface could actually work for a signage system; one: because of the calligraphic qualities, and two: because of experimenting with some letterforms in ways contrary to usual.

The signs did in fact turn out readable, even according to the testiment of the village children, not only up close but from a distance as well. The reason it worked, I think, would be the strict guidelines that govern letter spacing and heights, even with the diffulties that might be caused by calligraphic styling or unorthodox letterform experimentation.

One of the interesting accidents that happened with the sign-making was a sort of pseudo-aging look that occurred due to my sloppy paint job. So the end-result was sort of paradoxical in the sense that the signs, from a design perspective, looked absolutely new and fresh, yet the worn out paint job made them look like they'd been there for quite a long time. So upon entering the village, you feel like you're actually in an altogether new world with its very own rules and influences.


July 18, 2009:
The Day After Answers the Big Question

The uber philosophical question this whole Sign Language project was supposed to originally pose is whether or not design is a social necessity. Is design only a luxury that fortunate societies can benefit from?

This question would be answered by whether or not the village people found the newly installed signs beneficial to their lifestyle. Would the signs eventually become a necessity they couldn't function properly without?

Although the reaction of some village people suggested so on Open Day, the following day suggested the complete opposite when all signs, every single one of them, was stolen in the early morning.

So I guess yes, design is in fact a luxury and not a necessity at all.


August 31, 2009:
The Future of the Shatana Typeface


Just because project Sign Language proved design to be an unnecessary luxury, does not mean that a cool typeface can't come from it, and so I'm working on refining the line art for the Shatana Typeface, trying to perfect it, before figuring out how to turn it into a proper usable font.


I'm also cooking a spin-off of the Shatana Typeface. A sleeker, more simplified, more modern take on it. I call it... *drumroooolllllsssss* anticipation *moredrumrooooollllsssss*... The Post Shatana Typeface.