31/01/2019
Today was confusing.
We were officially introduced to Unit 7, the final 9 weeks project of our foundation year.
You can sense how stressed I was and I still am especially because while the tutors were explaining to us the project’s context, all that was on my mind was “Wait what? I am so extremely confused.” And this thought basically sums up what I was thinking the whole day.
Today was probably the most confusing taught day since the start of foundation. Seriously, it was head aching.
Other than the Unit 7 intro, we also had our first commune workshop.
Commune was also part of unit 7 that we were introduced to and it was also very confusing which made the workshop even more confusing.
We formed groups of 3, the group each of us was in was the group we were going to work with during commune.
To be honest, I thought the workshop would be more of an art workshop but it was not at all.
They gave us rubber bands and told us to attach our hands to the hands of the rest of the group members. Can you tell how confused I still am by this task?
After we all attached our hands to each other and barely could move, they gave us A4 white paper and gave us a couple of minutes to create paper planes. PAPER PLANES. Last time I did that, I was in 6th grade trying to impress my so-called crush.
So yes, we did create a paper plane but a very bad one indeed and when it was time to test them out, ours barely flew.
Let me think about this task. Why did they ask us to do something like this?
Commune was introduced as an approach to research that will encourage us to test out exciting ideas and experiments by working collectively. COLLECTIVELY. That’s the key word to the commune workshop we just went through today.
They wanted us to have a, maybe too extreme, taste of working collectively by using rubber bands as handcuffs and creating one object with 6 hands, fair enough. Makes sense now because I can somehow say that it did help us understand what they wanted from us and it was also playful and funny and we all need that kind of fun from time to time in classrooms.
After the workshop, we were asked to create a manifesto for our commune group. A set of rules that we were going to follow during these 3 days based on the things we had in common and what kind of things we wanted to do.
25/02/2019
Today, the morning started with the commune presentations.
The feedback on my commune group was pretty good and it was an exciting thing seeing the different things and ways the other groups worked in during commune.
But the presentation was bound to end and we had to move to more serious approach which is the first phase of our project.
We were told to think about what interested us the most during commune and what inspired us the most and see what we can develop from it.
What I liked the most during my commune was the calligraphy and geometric patterns that I saw in all the Middle eastern art in both museums and I knew that I wanted to develop that and use it as a part of my project’s first phase.
So I spent the day sketching and experimenting in my sketchbook to look at different ways I could use these things in my project.
05&07/03/2019
Today we went to the library in the morning for a library task that consisted of research with the help of our tutors and a librarian.
To be honest I came to the Library today having no idea what I wanted to do as a second outcome.
I knew that I wanted to advertise the Arab region and show people that we do have things that people don’t expect us to have, and artists and a nice life but I didn’t know how to do that.
When we started the research task I went around the library not knowing what I was searching for but then I came across some publications and one of them was a publication advertising the city New York.
I took it and opened it and I saw that it was a publication highlighting the best things that you can do in New York, with the best people that New York is proud of.
This publication made me think about an idea which is creating up of a publication to advertise the Arab world but not a normal advertisement but rather an ad that would highlight the unexpected things in the Arab world like the graffiti that we have the graffiti artists that to artists even the nightlife.
I did not start working on this publication before Thursday which was a group tutorial day Will because I did not want to start working on something and then realizing that this is not a good idea so I waited for an approval from a tutor to tell me that this was a good idea.
After getting the approval I started working on it and I designed a poster in a modern way using colors and modern fonts.
19&21/03/2019
Today was a normal university day like all the others where we went to work and get help with our outcomes
After our progress tutorial I had in mind to fix my publication and make it better and add and remove stuff to it
The first thing I did today was a plan of what I wanted to do during my winter break since I had to leave earlier than everyone else
One of my plans was to fix the publication and I also wanted to create three more outcomes for unit seven
I didn’t really know what I wanted my next outcome to be about so I had a one to one tutorial with Claire
We discussed how I wanted to work with geometric patterns and calligraphy and she told me to look into it and start sketching on my sketchbook and see what I get inspired from.
So I went on and continued my day by sketching and I went into the shop in archery and got a calligraphy pen which helped me test different ways of doing calligraphy.
On Thursday I had another one to one tutorial with the Will and we also discussed what I wanted to do is a third outcome and I realize that I wanted to use the geometric patterns and the calligraphy in an educational way
I wanted to create something that could teach people how to use Arabic letters the right way and show them the beauty of it
So I associated each letter of the English alphabet To a letter in the Arabic alphabet in my sketchbook.
29/04/2019
TOday was my first day back to university after spring break and honestly I missed it but I also was really stressed because assessment was getting really close.
Today's morning task was based on the assessment and its criteria as well as the self evaluation we had to write.
We started the day with reading the assessment criteria and writing notes about what we thought they meant.
To be honest, while I was reading them, I got a bit confused because I felt that some criteria were very similar to each other and so I asked the tutor about it and we discussed the importance of keys words in each criteria.
Honestly, I do not feel ready for assessment at all. I feel like there are so many criteria that we need to meet that it is almost impossible to.
We also evaluated each other in pairs based on the criteria and honestly I feel like my classmate evaluated me properly.
She gave me the good parts and the bad parts that I needed to fix like my research and adding more research to my sketchbook, so it was mainly research that I needed to work on.
We then read through some of the self-evaluation points and took notes on how to write it.
07/01/2019
So, I spent this whole week reading and rereading all the notes I took about the Unit 7 project, as well as the PowerPoint presentation that was on Moodle, as well as the PPP of past students so I could fully understand what they wanted us to write in the draft and I finally did!
I understood the concept and the way they wanted us to work and reflect but the only thing that was missing was a theme to my project.
This is when brainstorming came in. I did some brainstorming on my sketchbook and I finally came up with a theme that I LOVE and that really interested me since I came to London which is “The Arabic Society.”
You must be thinking how did coming to London make me interested in my own culture and society?
Well, I’ve always lived in an Arab country, two to be precise, I was always living between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and I think that when you get used to seeing something everyday since you were a baby, you don’t really bother reflecting on it or looking at it in a different way.
But coming to London, living alone, living abroad made me reflect on the place I used to live in, made me realize how much I took its beauty and culture for granted and how little I knew of its culture.
Which made me think “This is the perfect opportunity”.
People living in London, British, EU, or even international don’t have very much knowledge about this society and culture so as a graphic designer, how can I enrich their knowledge and change their perspective introducing a nicer image of the Arab world?
This is what I wanted to work on for 9 weeks and I wrote my PPP based on that.
Today was not a taught day but we did come in for tutorials to talk about our PPP draft and when I talked about mine, Clair told me that there was a lot of potential to my theme and that if I worked right, I wouldn’t struggle with it and she also gave me some advice about how to arrange some things I wrote in my draft and I took them into consideration.
26&28/02/2019
Today consisted of one to one tutorial with Hannah and when my turn arrived I went to Hannah struggling because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do for my first outcome.
I struggled a lot during my first phase of this project. I know I wanted to talk about the Arab culture and I knew what I wanted to visually include in my project such as geometric patterns and Arabic calligraphy but I needed a message and since my project was about changing people’s perspective about the Arab world, I first started with researching about this perspective that people had.
I went around the campus and asked some students this question: “what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “the Arab world””
To be honest, I expected people to have answers such as terrorists, terrorism, war etc. but I was actually shocked that the answers were funnier and more playful.
The most common answers I got were:
All Arab woman wear head scarves that
All Arab people were rich
All Arab people own expensive cars
All Arab countries are deserts
All people are conservative
After getting these answers I was thinking of a way to show people and to guide people into the right vision of the Arab world as a first step.
I spent a lot of time thinking of a way to do so and I complicated my thoughts and made this too hard.
We were told to keep it simple we were told to follow your instincts and not to overthink.
I did a lot of research I went into websites and checked different books and I was inspired by a lot of things but these things were not the right Inspiration or designs that I wanted to use as a first step of my unit 7 project.
To keep it simple I chose to design him to design a playful guide and a list of facts that cleared people’s vision of the Arab world.
I designed a poster called “THE ARAB WORLD: FACTS”
That included five facts that everyone should know about the Arab world whether they are Arab or not.
To design this poster, I was inspired by the geometric patterns that I saw during the exhibitions are in the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum and I choose to include them in my poster design because they what represents the Arab world and its rich history in Art and Design.
Progress Tutorial
Today was the progress progress tutorial and I had mine with Will.
I came in with an outcome, which is the publication that I worked on during the week.
My progress tutorial went fine and it actually helped me really know where I was heading next with my project.
I got good feedback on the publication and I decided to remake it into a better publication using the feedback that I got.
As for my future ideas and where my project was heading, Will and I discussed my unit 7 theme and I decided that I wanted to work on the history of the Arabic art as well as the influence of the west on the middle east.
I went back home and I did some research because Will asked me some questions that I did not have the answer to and I was curious to know about them.
After doing my research I found out that the Arabic calligraphy was first introduced in the Quran and Arabic artists started practicing it as an act of worship to God.
I also found out that the reason why the geometric patterns are such a repetitive and famous thing in the Arab world is because when Islam was first introduced, using faces as decoration in holy places was banned, so artists just turned geometry into an art by making these patterns.
I later on realized that this information is something that very few people know of and I want to do something about it, I want to enrich people about this matter because it’s a very interesting thing to know and talk about but I have no idea how I am going to turn this research into a visualization so I am counting on getting some feedback next week.
Progress Tutorial Feedback
Outcome 3 - Spring Break
My third outcome was based on an educational project using Arabic letters and Arabic calligraphy.
The way I started this project was I associated each letter in the English alphabet to a letter in the Arabic alphabet and I created a typeface out of it.
After I did that I went back home for spring break and I continued working on that outcome I decided to use the typeface for something educational and I was inspired by a poster that I saw that says “write your name in Chinese” so I thought why not give people the opportunity to write their name in Arabic?
So I designed a poster that does that and I decided to place it somewhere that is supposed to be educational so I thought about a wall above a study desk because this is where people focus the most individually.
— DIFFERENT DATES
So after creating a fourth outcome, I had the idea to go back to my third outcome and develop it and add more educational posters to it.
I thought about adding a poster of the days of the week in Arabic and English and the way you pronounce them in Arabic and same thing for months of the year so that’s what I did.
I drew them first in my sketchbook then traced them on illustrator and created a poster and combined all three posters on one picture of a study desk and I finalized my third outcome.
14/02/2019
Today was our first taught day after the assessment and our day was not very hard.
We started with planning what we were going to do during commune.
For the past week, I haven’t been really thinking about commune because I didn’t think it was something I had to think about now.
But when we were asked to plan our commune day, I started thinking about it and the things I wanted to do.
I wanted my commune day to be about primary research but to also follow our group’s manifesto which is called “Different Perspectives”.
Our manifesto is about breaking our daily routines and visiting new places while being inspired and keeping an open mind. It’s called “Different Perspectives” because we decided to spend commune looking at things through different perspectives.
So, I thought about taking my group members to see some Arab related art that will help me with my research and at the same time I would get the chance to know what they think of it as people that were never exposed to that kind of culture.
After some research-based work, I found out that both the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum had a section for Middle Eastern/Islamic Art so I planned a day to go visit both museums and I also thought about introducing Lebanese food to my group so I planned for us to have lunch there.
I think it’s going to be pretty exciting and fun for them to get to know my culture and more importantly for me to get to know more about it.
04/02/2019
After working the whole weekend on my first outcome which is the poster that I designed about the 05 anti-stereotypes of the Arab world I went to university and presented my outcome during a group tutorial with some classmates and the tutor.
After I presented my work I got feedback saying that my audience was well thought, that my poster was well done, but that there was the contradiction in what I have just designed.
The whole point of me designing the poster is for people to be aware of these anti-stereotypes and stop thinking in a stereotypical way but when I was designer the poster I I was thinking: “which design should I include?”
The first thing that came to my mind was the geometric patterns because they represented the Arab world which I later one when I was presenting noticed that it was a contradiction because I was stereotyping the Arabic region with geometric patterns and the calligraphy font.
So when I went back home after the tutorial, I chose to design another poster trying to make the geometric patterns more modern and more like the poster that we would see today.
I tried designing many patterns but making them too simple was not the right choice because I found that it was missing something so I thought about doing it more modern with the colors and maybe making the geometric patterns show less.
That’s what I did, and it actually worked and I designed a brand new poster for my first outcome.
18/03/2019
Today was scale day and the point of this day was to think of an idea from we previous worked on and visualize it on a big scale which was one square meters and we had the whole day to do it so it was basically a one-day project.
To be honest at first it was a bit confusing because everyone was like “so wait what what are we supposed to do? are we supposed to stop working on our outcomes and just like create a big piece?”
But then I started thinking individually and I started looking back in my sketchbook and the research that I did last week, and what I wanted to include in today’s project was the information that I found about the geometric patterns in the Arab world and how they were used for mindfulness and meditation
I thought about creating my own pattern and that’s what I did as a start for my work
I used illustrator to create this pattern that I printed out in big scale and I made sure it had a soothing look that makes you feel calm.
When I printed it and put it on the wall I wanted to add something to it that was related to calligraphy so I thought about writing “peace of mind” in Arabic and I experimented with that but when I started with it I didn’t like how it turned out so I tried doing that with another color but after that as well I didn’t not like the outcome.
I then, thought a bit more about what I can add to this pattern and I thought about adding the color red because black and red are big sharp color marks that boldness but are also soothing to the eye because they match.
I ended up doing this pattern that was half black and white and red, and half plain black and white and I think that for a one-day project it was successful and I like the fact that we scaled it up because I feel like this helped me just to really feel my communication and to really make people feel this calmness within the pattern.
Outcome 4 - Spring break
After creating my third outcome that was an educational outcome I wanted to continue on that on that educational path because I felt like my work had a purpose
I was inspired by my third outcome that helped people write their names in Arabic and decided to create an app that helped people to learn the whole Arabic language
So I started brainstorming on my sketchbook how I want to be the app to look like and I wanted it to have a fun aspect and not a serious one
I wanted it to be illustrated and I wanted to use playful characters in it that will help you learn the Arabic language
I first started creating the logo and the slogan as well as the name of the app
Then I started designing each one of these elements as well as each step of the app
I like this idea cause it’s not only helping kids in a classroom to write their names in Arabic but it’s helping everyone learn a language that is somehow considered a hard one.
I am satisfied by the outcome and I think it looks playful but has the learning part in it at the same time so it’s the perfect amount of seriousness and creativity.
Laser cutting workshop - 24/04/2019
For my fifth outcome I decided to create an abstract shape for the laser cutting workshop as a final project for unit seven and as a conclusion that gives value to the patterns and the calligraphy that I worked with all along this project.
I wanted to create an installation that could be installed on walls in houses or in offices for people that like the Arabic calligraphy and patterns.
I wanted the sketch that i was gonna create to be abstract because I did not want to write anything specific that would be liked by some people only but instead I wrote in an abstract way allowing the calligraphy to look like words but it really isn’t.
That way I leave it to people’s imagination to read what they see is written, not what is actually written.
Since my design was a bit complicated, I chose the cheapest laser cutting option available and I chose the color black to keep it simple and keep the emphasis on the design, not the color.