Very exciting news!! First of all, you’ve all heard of the Helvetica movie, right? If not, a very few words: The movie is directed by Gary Hustwit and it is about Helvetica. Yes, the typeface. More »
Due to the annoyingly large number of spam mail, I have disallowed commenting for now. If you wish to contact me, please write to my e-mail as you can see on the contact page.
This is an announcement long overdue: As of of Sept 2007 I am a PhD candidate at Leiden University. My research tackles legibility studies on the Arabic script, and will be supervised by renowned Dutch type designer Gerard Unger. I wasn’t late in posting for lack of excitement, quite the opposite! I’ve been very busy lately which is why I have been posting less. I will not be discussing the results of the studies until the research is complete. Still, there will always be some exciting stuff to report on so stay tuned!
My Lebanese friends and I sometimes talk about our favorite cartoons when growing up. Who wouldn’t want to have endless hours of watching cartoons? I searched online and it seems that in the past year all sorts of videos have been posted on youtube. You’ll notice no Disney movies here, since those came to Lebanon at a later date. Most of the cartoons that I saw until the age of 8 or 9 were Japanese ones. As for the other Arab countries, well, I can’t really tell though I read that Grandizer was popular all across the Arab world. Anyway, below is a list of my favorite cartoons while growing up. These are the opening sequences and have songs that we used to know by heart. Please note the typography… More »
One of the icons of the 50s and 60s and music legends is Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez. His voice is deep, melodic, and heart warming. He was primarily a singer but starred in many films and it is through these that my generation got to meet him. The black and white Egyptian movies are quite interesting to see and they still play on TV today. My sister is addicted to these! I found some clips on youtube (as usual!) and selected some interesting ones: More »
My birthday is Nov 8, isn’t this a coincidence? I was planning on waiting for the 2nd generation but it’s so tempting to not do that. Hmm…
Completely non-typographic news: look to the sky tomorrow night… They’re saying we can see maybe 100 every hour!!! The show starts tonight but peaks Sunday at midnight. If you are in Western Europe, or North America, and is lucky to be in good weather conditions, then tomorrow is the night! Enjoy…
More info here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6940962.stm
After flight delays, a medical emergency on board (not me, thankfully), and long queues at immigration, we finally arrived in Seattle! 9 hours time difference is a killer, got me so tired that I forgot my laptop in the elevator… What a wonderful way to start the conference. Thankfully, I managed to get it back and things started to look up immediately afterwards. The conference is like a reunion of old friends and it’s wonderful to see so may familiar faces.
Thursday night was the opening night with a nice and relaxed reception on the hotel terrace and an absolutely hilarious presentation by the keynote speakers Robynne Raye and Michael Strassburger of Modern Dog. I don’t remember when was the last time we had such an enjoyable presentation, interesting work and lots of humor. So cool!
For those in the Seattle area or planning to attend this year’s TypeCon, there’s going to a special panel about Arabic Typography on Saturday afternoon with Mamoum Sakkal, Aida Sakkal, and myself and moderated by John Hudson. I’ll make a small report after I get back.
