Damaskuserlebnis (“Damascus experience”) is a student work made at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, presenting a collection of diverse contributions related to the country of Syria. Fifteen contributors offer insight into their very personal Syria between the years 1953 and 2022. The intention of this work is to sensitize our society to different cultural contexts in terms of integration and unbiased communication. It is intended to encourage people to become active, to profess values and to stand up for one another. I see my role as a designer as creating visibility, with the help of thoughtful design. Design that informs and collaborates with others to create a something new.

In the past, as today, people all over the world leave their homes behind in search of a new future. The numbers of people fleeing are constantly increasing and for this reason it is important to have an extraverted interaction with each other and to create spaces for common discourse. If we read something about Syria today: then mostly in connection with war, suffering and torture. From the stories of my grandparents and and other persons with a contribution in the book, I know that Syria was and still is much more. My grandfather, for example, described Syria as a colorful, open, joyful country with thousands of smells and sounds. A place of friendship and great hospitality, work and progress. My motivation for this work is also to show the positive sides of the Middle East. Nevertheless, it is of great importance to understand how it could come to the current situation in Syria.

The book was published in cooperation with the Lucia Verlag and Wortschatz. The price of the book is composed of the production costs and a donation which will go to the association Wortschatz – Netzwerk Welcome Weimar. This network is a language workshop, viewing itself as a dynamic low-threshold offer to improve one’s own language together and to learn from and with each other.

The Bachelor thesis was supervised by Junior-Prof. Stefanie Schwarz and Dipl.-Des. Stefan Guzy, Department of Visual Communication Faculty of Art and Design Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

Damaskuserlebnis is a thread-sewn brochure with 104 pages, measuring 16.5×23.5×1 cm. It was digitally printed on 270 gsm Symbol Card and 120 gsm Lona Offset by DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg who also took care of the OTA binding. The book is available from do you read me?! Berlin. ISBN 978-3-945301-55-5

Find more information in an article about Damaskuserlebnis by Slanted.

In my graduation project at École Supérieure des Arts Visuels de Marrakech (ESAVM), I initiated a study exploring the profound story of mapmaking and cartography, introducing Up-side Down.

The first part of the project is a bilingual Arabic and English book, featuring three major subjects. The first one explores a brief understanding of the impact of cartography on our lives and its political power; the second part accentuates the north and south’s pre-12th-century history, the Arab Golden Age, studying a number of Islamic maps and manuscripts and revealing how the Arabs used to see the north; and the last section of the book covers the attempts of representing the world on a two-dimensional surface using the map projections, transferring the spherical network of parallels and meridians of the globe into a flat surface, these attempts had various intentions and some of them have deceptively represented the world in order to draw a contrast between religions and races.

The book is a paperback double-sided halves bound together with one part rotated 180° relative to the other (also known as the dos–à–dos binding), serving the script direction of each language, and emphasizing the Up-side Down notion.

On the second part of the project comes the posters, following the third chapter of the book, featuring a set of three parodical map projections that have been grimly distorted to accentuate the subject.

The digital calligraphy that I used is in Naskh script, composed with a design software for Arabic calligraphy called eMashq.com. The font used for the Arabic body text is Nassim Arabic. For the English texts I paired Kessler and JJannon.

See more images on my Behance and Instagram accounts.

A selection of the many language-specific websites of the VOA (Voice Of America) news service, on December 31. Among the used typefaces are Merriweather by Sorkin Type and Rosetta Type's Skolar, Skolar Sans and Nassim.

Bosnian language website, using Skolar and Skolar Sans.

Greek language website, using Skolar Greek & Skolar Sans Greek

Ukrainian website, using Skolar Cyrillic and Skolar Sans Cyrillic.

Haitian Creole, a French-based creole language spoken by 9.6–12 million people worldwide, and the only language of most Haitians. The typography uses Skolar and Skolar Sans.

The (South) Korean website of VOA uses Nanum Square.

VOA website for Tibet, using Microsoft Himalaya (released by Microsoft in 2012)

Vietnamese website, with typography using Open Sans & Tinos

Afghanistan website, using Pashto as language, set in Rosetta Type’s Nassim typeface

Amharic language website for Ethiopia, using Geez Unicode

A right-aligned website for Iran. The language here is Persian, using the Farsi characters from Arial.

VOA Afrique, a French language website using Merriweather & Skolar Sans

The drawings of the artist Wael Shawky are an important part of his complete works. Therefore seven of them are put into focus in the catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition in the Kunsthaus Bregenz. In order to refer to the artist’s scenographic and manual working processes as well as to the changing perspectives in his drawings they are turned into pop-up pages. In addition there is a little illustrated booklet on the exhibition neatly nested in the inside of the cover.

All elements serve to communicate the work in the best possible way without pushing themselves into the fore. The uncoated paper refers to the drawing paper, to the colour scheme of the drawings and to the materiality of the marionettes which Shawky sets a high value on. Relief varnish and lock-stitch binding underline the wire and strings the artist works with. Three languages and the legibility from two sides pay tribute to the different readers and, on the other hand, reflect the content (crusades from the arabic and european points of view). Overall reduced design, pop-ups, paper and finishing stimulate pausing and exploring the delicate yet complex drawings.

Client: Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria)
Concept, design, paper engineering: designreiche
Hardcover, 270 × 180 mm, 8 double spreads (7 pop-ups)
Softcover, 180 × 120 mm, 60 pages (booklet in German, English and Arabic)
Typeface: Nassim (Latin and Arabic) by Rosetta
Paper: Gmund Color System Matt 62, Amber Graphic (Arctic Paper)
Print & Assembling: Eberl Print

Nassim was used for this visually striking set of postcards and posters, contributing towards intercultural exchange, and showing its display qualities. The Austrian project was born from the refugee movement that is taking place in Europe since 2015. Many of the people fleeing from war speak Arabic, a simple “Thanks” or an invitation to a coffee could be the first step towards a better understanding between the different cultures and languages.

Awarded at the European Design Awards 2017, all proceeds donated to “Kulturen in Bewegung” (cultures in motion).

Commissioned by the Government of Mauritania to broaden awareness and understanding, and to help promote commerce and tourism, this trilingual, large format, coffee-table book was designed by John Hubbard and published by Ewrks Media Inc. It uses Nassim by Titus Nemeth for Arabic and English and Le Monde Sans by Jean François Porchez for French.

In Arabic, the letter kaf (ك) is the only difference between here (huna) and there (hunak). The Arabic Culture Festival huna/k defines itself — quite literally — as a bridge between the Arab “there” and the “here” of the Western world. This transgression is visualized in the editorial design: the flyers, programs and posters are interlinked, once you put them side by side. The principle of merging “here” and “there” is also reflected in the mirror symmetry of the design, which always provides bilingual information: When turned upside down, the program can be read in the other language, and the pages browsed in the usual direction; from right to left in Arabic, or from left to right in German. Printed with silver spot color. Made in cooperation with Fadi Abdelnour.

Conceived by Rohan Murty and planned and published by Harvard University Press, the Murty Classical Library of India is a bold project to revive Indian classical literature and make it widely available and accessible. The goal is to publish more than 500 books of classical Indian literature over the course of the next 100 years!

The concept and beautiful design of the books was done by Rathna Ramanathan. A range of new Indian types were specially commissioned from Fiona Ross and John Hudson of Tiro Typeworks. The Arabic type used for Persian is Nassim by Titus Nemeth, presented here in the book The History of Akbar, Vol I. The Latin is Henrik Kubel’s Antwerp.

The jacket design of the series is by Andrea A. Stranger. See the Murty Library’s website for more information on the design and typography.

Typopassage is an exhibition venue in public space, dedicated to type and lettering. It is hosted by the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna and the shows are curated by renowned Austrian design office bauer Konzept und Gestaltung. For the exhibition of typopassage no. 2 by German designer Ariane Spanier, Nassim was chosen for the accompanying catalogue. The titling typeface is a custom font designed by Erwin Bauer for Typopassage.

From April 8 to May 3, 2009, the École Superieure d’Arts et de Design (ESAD) in Amiens featured an exhibition of drawings by the artist Rafael Mahdavi. At the occasion of this show, the school published the accompanying catalogue, showing the eight canvases together with texts and an interview conducted in Paris in January 2009. ESAD graduate Lucille Guigon was commissioned to conceive the design and layout of this publication. As typeface for the entire text, Lucille chose Nassim, using its various weights and styles to clearly distinguish different text categories.

Following the redesign of the mother-page of the BBC News, the BBC Arabic and BBC Persian launched their redesigned websites. It is probably one of the first, and certainly the biggest site yet to use webfonts – Arabic webfonts that is. The BBC uses custom versions of Nassim by Titus Nemeth. The typeface was painstakingly optimized for screen and for web with the help of Thomas Grace (hinting) and Tim Ahrens (webfonts production).

“The challenge in this endeavour was to come up with a solution that on one hand corresponded well with the BBC Arabic site, and on the other didn’t loose the distinct character that made Nassim win multiple design prizes.” says Titus in regard of the customization process on his personal blog: “In close collaboration with the designers and editors of the BBC World Service I revised a number of features and letters to accommodate for the style and specificities deemed most appropriate for the Arabic language website. The resulting BBC Nassim stays true to the qualities of the original design, whilst toning down some idiosyncrasies and giving it a generally more ‘Arabic’ look.”

The typeface was further redesigned for the BBC Persian redesign (the last three images). Titus redraw Nassim to give the website a distinctly Iranian look, whilst maintaining the coherence with the BBC brand visual language. On this project, he worked in close collaboration with the Persian language service, and supported his decisions with historical research. For a more detailed account of the Persian cutomization see also Nemeth's blog.

You can also read a post on BBC Internet blog by Kutlu Çanlıoğlu, Senior Creative Director of UX&D at BBC Future Media.