Just when I thought they were slowing down, Foot Locker comes with a new collaboration line. Combining Adidas classic silhouettes with legendary graffiti artist, Cope2’s fresh art. I especially love how the artwork goes even UNDER the sneakers.
I will have to go check them out in person.

Adidas and Footlocker did collaborate with Cope2 before on the End to End line (which is still available at Foot Locker)

More pics and the press release after the jump (more…)

When I was 13 I was a totally obsessed with Majed Magazine, an Arabic kids comics magazine. I went as far as getting the Mandoob Majed card, I was hardcore.

I bought an issue few months ago and I felt all nostalgic and shit, I gave the magazine to my little brother who enjoyed it as well. He started buying it every week.

So he showed me the recent issue and to my surprise …

I don’t know what to blame it on.

My friends at Foot Locker Kuwait have always kept me in touch with their recent arrivals but few days ago we met for a dinner where they showed me a collection that not only introduced new design elements from the brands they sell but also is introducing a new strategy to restore some of the classic values that Foot Locker was built on.

They realize they cater to people who appreciate sneakers and adore them but also want to be unique and have a pair that reflect their individuality. So they actually started bringing extremely limited edition sneakers. We are talking about pairs you could only find 16 of in the middle east. I know Footlocker has stores in Kuwait (Marina, Avenues), Qatar and the UAE, I’m quite sure they have plans to open a few more stores.

Imagine this, you can actually get a pair of sneakers and rest assured no one will be wearing a similar pair or say “Oh my brother got a pair just like those”. Individualistic and unique people would appreciate this approach, I know I did. I saw the price tags on those and it’s seriously nothing a genuine sneaker lover wouldn’t afford.

I was given this pair of Puma Sneakers that really caught my attention. I love green and nothing can be greener than green itself; cash ladies and gentlemen or DJ Cash Money (legendary hip-hop DJ and DMC champion) to be specific.

It’s scary, the colors almost go with colors of the blog.

Read the full press release (after the jump) to have a better idea

(more…)

After a relatively long-running teaser, I’m disappointed with the revealer; Burgan Bank’s new identity. I even thought it was a teaser for a new hospital in town (that picture of a pregnant woman was kind of misleading).

Burgan Bank’s logo has been pretty much the same since their establishment back in the seventies. With only little modernization retouches here and there every few years depending on the mood of the marketing team.

This is the most disgusting redesign I have seen in a while.

I can see the arabic “ba” letter (with the orange dot) but where is the “b”. I have a crazy theory, hear me out; I think there is a “b” but it’s kinda hidden.

The icon is a blue 3d ribbon spinning around and the continuation of it that makes the rest of the b is to be realized by the viewer. The only clue they have there is the sharp cut in the dark blue part. Also the gradual change in color is another clue; dark blue, light blue then white (which is stupid because the background color is white as well and not so stupid because, well, it isn’t really there).

Sometimes there’s a very thin line between stupid and genius. I’m not sure exactly what I think of the logo, I’m still somehow disappointed.

Wiki: Gestalt Theory

End to End is what happens when Adidas and Footlocker get seven of the best names in street art, lock them in a room for three days to design a street-art-inspired line of sneakers, t-shirts and accessories.

While they’re not available in Kuwait right now, I heard they will be available in Footlocker in a month or two. Totally worth waiting for.

Here’s a picture of my favorite pair in there.

For a while I thought this logo was a sun going down and it’s reflected on the water surface of the sea or something with waves.

Bottom line, I think It’s a head with two friggin’ faces or something. How beautiful.

I love wood. I love the color, the texture and sometimes the smell of everything made of wood. That’s why I picked this wooden toilet seat the moment I found it at Avenues’ IKEA.

It was quite a struggle to install it, I had to cut the old screws up with a saw. I had to put my hands in yucky places and touch things that been in the dark for years and … uh don’t remind me.
It’s funny how dependent we are on the net these days. The tiniest problem I face I go running to Google. I found few articles but this guy had pretty much the same one but the way he writes was quite weird for a how-to article.

Now my guests can rest their tushies on a proper seat.

Take a look at this flyer.

I want to throw nights like these here, just read thru this thing. Some of the stuff seems unreal. Baladi Breakbeat Anybody? Hell yeah. Sayyidi hard-core, I would shake to that. A musical act called DJinn and a magazine called Zaghareet, How cheerful.

But maaaan, you need a Sheikh to Shake with here.

“SAE Institute is the world’s largest audio college, with over 45 campuses on four continents. Creative, practical training in audio engineering, music production, filmmaking, digital video, animation, graphics, multimedia, entertainment business, web design and development since 1976.”

They are opening in kuwait, and the classes will start as soon as the 5th of next month. I was invited recently by them to be a guest lecturer and to work on some intensive weekend workshops. I was brainstorming with the school manager yesterday and guess who was working on his new album at the studios of the school? No other than Star Academy’s Star, Bashaar AL Shati. I even sneaked inside the studio and said hi and wished him good luck with the new album. Nice guy, really down to earth.

Today they are having an open day, from 2-6 PM.If you are interested in audio engineering, music production, filmmaking, digital video, animation, graphics, multimedia, entertainment business, web design and development then pay them a visit today and see for yourself what they have to offer. They are located in the industrial area of Shuwaikh, behind Canada-Dry St, In the same building as Portland Cement. More on the website.

Link: SAE Institute Kuwait

I can’t believe a consultancy company that specialize in help existing businesses to improve their inner working structures has a logo this bad. Now I’m sure this is not a money-issue, They can afford a decent agency to do that job, It’s OBVIOUSLY the taste of the decision maker who have absolutely nothing to do with design.

Why do they think because they own the company they can do whatever they want? I would really respect a man who confessed his weaknesses in certain areas and handed the job to people who know how to handle it.

This logo on a scale of ten doesn’t even deserve 1. Unreadable, badly-designed, lines are too thin to be seen from a distance (best example, their billboard on gulf road) … and really what the hell they were thinking when they used the triangle ( the A if you must insist) instead of the alef.

“Will the white text stand out on the black background?”

God I love them

This gotta be the most hilarious rip-off I have seen in a long long while. So They took the colors, they made an extra effort to mimic the typeface. However, they replaced the iconic image of Col. Harland Sanders with a weird looking rooster.

What’s really funny is, although the rooster might be a masculine symbol, the restaurant’s name has ‘Kanneth’ in it.

This one is for McArabian

Found at my t-shirts guy shop

First of all and just to make things clear, I’m not trying to make fun of any race of people here and I respect flipino people just as much as the next guy. I have flipino friends and I hope this won’t piss them off. It’s not about them, it’s about the ad.

On the back cover of the amazing bazaar dining guide (comes free with the free bazar magazine) you will find an ad for Ikea store restaurant. The ad is so blah you won’t even notice anything wrong about it if you were living in kuwait for some time.

We are so used to see flipino staff in most restaurants that it’s almost normal to ignore how hilarious this ad is. Here’s the ad …

Did you notice what I’m talking about?

Swedish hospitality? You portray that by showing your flipino staff dressed in cheap, silly swedish customes? I really feel bad for the staff who got dressed in these silly customes, I also feel sorry for the pathetic guys at the agency that made such ad. Maybe the client is stupid but it doesn’t mean you have to be as stupid as them. They’re paying you money so they can use your so called experience to do their ads professionally.

Shame on you Al-Homaizi, Shame on you Ikea and fucking shame on you Impact & Echo (If you still have that account) :p

Peace & Love to my flipinos and flipinas

… and sorry if I pissed any swedish people off in the process.

• Misspelled the name of a continent
• Chose crappy stock images, and didn’t even ‘cut’ them nicely.
• Hot colors for a cold season
• nothing is almost aligned with the other, and the box below shows an obvious misplacement. The designer apparently never heard of grids systems.

So which grocery store is designing Kuwait Airways Holidays division these days? and why oh why it has to be handled by another agency than the one that handles the main account.

Is this stupid or what?

Layaleena’s ripoff, Sho Fee Ma Fee, in their december issue had a really interesting, absolutely unintentional yet fabulously hilarious mistake. Bad design could cause disasters but bad design here just embarassed the guy featured on the cover and gave me a little something to laugh at in this lazy morning.

Did you get it?
Damn chicken nuggets …

Explanation: The designer used different background colors and lines to separate the pictures AND a sentence long enough to go under two pictures. However, by seperating that sentence, which says “هل أنتهت كوارث العام؟”, … and …eh should I go on?

Oh yeah … and WHY OH WHY they called they magazine Sho Fee Ma Fee, I would rather see “Shako Mako” Sounds funkier and “Kuwaitier” … somebody call the editor and ask him why they called it that.

The guys at Pitchfork not only have a great taste in music they also have an incredible sense of humor.
Reading some of the comments in this feature is funnier than the covers themselves. Some of the covers are for some major bands.

This children book from germany will give you the answers when your kids pop that hard question. Very graphic and kinda not safe for work. That family kinda looks hippy, especially their car.

RED ON BLUE?

I don’t blame your color-blind eyes, I blame the client who approved that ad.

Thanks

Tata Botata

Yesterday, I was trying to waste sometime before the screening of shewrite’s dad documentary which kicked major ass (wait for the review). I was at Sultan Center (sharq) doing some shopping, I picked the may and june issues of Icon. The may Issue got a really nice feature on Jasper Goodall, One of my favorite Illustrators.

This is not a design-related post, or wait, maybe it is.

I was looking around, which I don’t usually do in Sultan, and I found a very interesting product arrangments. The yeast shelf is placed exactly in front of the grape, apple and peach juice bottles shelf. Coincedence? I think NOT.

So? What do you think?
I’m still getting mixed comments but mostly they are positive. If I get enough requests I will post a real picture.

P.S: for those who will say ‘you still got the afro’, well, I used to have a long curly hair but I didn’t update the image.

“Phamous 69 is a sexy, provocative online magazine incorporating high fashion, music and lifestyle.”

… AND lots of beautifully stylized soft-core porn.

I did something really cool today. I’ve been having problems with the default arabic font on the mac while browsing the net using Firefox. I thought, Since Mac OS X supports True Type font files, Why not copy the Tahoma font from the PC to the Mac.

I thought I should edit the font in FontLab to convert it’s encoding page from windows to unicode but apparently it is unicode by default. I just changed the fonts settings in Firefox. It worked just fine and now I can see zaydoun’s arabic posts with this beautiful font, tahoma.

I might as well copy the rest of the arabic fonts from the windows to the mac.

/me looks at his PC
/me looks at the window

First I would like to express my deepest sympathies to the families of these people, I don’t know them personally but I think I should do this before getting down to the subject of this post.

Don’t you like how the letters are kinda squeezed next to each other yet they are not crowded, I thought they use computers and specific fonts to write these names in the papers. Computers can’t do that, only the talented human hand can.

Been digging the art of arabic calligraphy lately. I used to envy the japanese designers on how they can play with the letters of their language to create amazing typefaces with brushes or digitally using computers but now I think there’s a big big room to play with arabic typography and calligraphy.

I found this ad about this calligraphy course and I’m kinda tempted to join. Anybody else wanna join? … Shurouq? it’s in jabrya, you know.

I was watching the show reel of this amazing Swedish design studio and I couldn’t resist playing the whole thing again and again. The graphics were all fine and everything but it’s the soundtrack that caught my ear, so I looked ‘good vibrations’ up and got some results from my trusty eMule.

The Beach Boys, Money Mark and Brian Wilson (which was really down the list). So I downloaded the beach boys’ track first and I gave it a listen. It was the same song but a different recording and obviously old arrangements. So I though ‘okaaay, the track I’m after is a cover done by money mark for the beach boys’ well, I discovered that it’s not. It’s a totally different track, totally not the money mark I know. So without even downloading the Brian Wilson track, which sounded familiar, I checked Amazon and YES. It’s a rerecording of the original, end of the story.

You have to listen to it, you have to.

And btw I have an additional copy of money mark’s album ‘push the button’ (which happens to be a really cool and funky album) I will be more than happy to give it away for anyone who’s interested. First come, First served.

No wait, let me add a twist to this, Try to give me a good reason why I should give you this CD. The best one will get this CD.

Little Something for those who developed a cupcake fetish lately.

For the sake of Iraqi Children, at least.

I’m not going to say “oh, I’m sorry that I didn’t post anything in awhile…” Cuz it’s not an obligation and I never promised any one to keep this blog updated on daily basis however I will try to update you on what’s going on tatabotataville:
(In no particular order)

• I Just finished a big project and I hope things will go well in the printing press, I’m really scared that they might fuck things up.

• Got ALL of my proposed designs for the Identity of a new pan-Asian fast food chain REJECTED. They are not really “MY” options I just did the art direction part but the concepts were done by another Architect (friend of mine). I think we have the chance for a second round but I’m not sure it’s really worth it cuz we will be competing with this “Architect From Chicago” and as far as I know the owner got “3oqdat el frinjah” or whatever they call it and he will say yes to any thing designed by that “Architect From Chicago”.

  BTW What’s with Architects doing graphic design? I know they studied the same stuff as graphic designers study and every thing, but can’t you just stick to designing buildings? Why do you want to take over our business? Amunki, don’t take it really personal, okay. :p

• Yesterday I invited friends to this fancy show-off restaurant that we wouldn’t go to normally. The reason? The menu was designed by yours truly. The waiter said that the people really liked the menu and it’s much nicer than the previous one.
• I found out that I have a thing for “7adaag” I really enjoyed it and I’m going to do it again tomorrow (hopefully).
• So I just got the chance to see Amelie. What an amazing movie. What I loved the most about it was the cinematography, It was done in a very professional way. The Colors of the movie as a whole, the slow pans, the fast spins and simple yet effective Visual FX.

  I also saw Connie And Carla, I will just give it three stars and a half out of five. One movie to avoid: Garfield.

• I Finally used Bluetooth to connect my PC to my Mac. I can share files now but I have to figure out how to share the net connection.
• Did you notice the shades? Sure thing you did.
  So what do you think?

Damn, this post took forever … I have a feeling that I can add more news and updates but I just can’t remember.