Celebrating the Levantine cuisine

My wife Lana has created a very interesting project by her own; a cooking channel talks only about the cuisine of Levant region and addressing the speakers of German language.. Enjoy watching while I enjoy eating 🙂

Typographic massacre!

I was stumbled upon this photo from Egypt, showing a tiny street having this enormous amount of doctor and clinics signs over two facing buildings, unbelievable shot! A street like this must enter Guinness world records!

Now talking about the sad part: Typography, yes! I feel so ashamed for the quality of design and type in this place, and all over the Arab world cities to be more realistic! Choosing this ‘ugly’ typeface has become a virus that infected every printed material in any Arabic letters! From Afghanistan to the USA, everything is polluted with this disease!

It’s similar to Arial at some level, if we count the popularity and presence, but Arial is way and way better in legibility and decentness! Can you imagine that!

That font, originally designed by Yemeni type designer Abdualla Faris in 1993 for Diwan software company in the UK, the font named as Muna, it has two weights back then, and it was widely used in books and magazines across the Arab world as a body text font, then, Layout of Lebanon has stolen it and named: AXT Manal, after that, many hacks were happen on the font, until the final surgery which made the font that bold and bulky, I think it was done for ASHARQ AL-AWSAT newspaper from London.. then the black stupid font went so viral! And ruined a country with an amazing legacy of hand painted signs!

You need to live in the Arab world to understand what exactly I mean with stupid, ugly and bad Arabic font!

أبو الصبر الحزين!

في زيارة لصديقي حمزة، وجدت عنده هذا العمل المطرّز يدوياً:

توقفت مذهولاً أمامه. واختلطت عليي الأفكار والرؤى. هل أنا أمام العشاء الأخير لدافنشي؟ أو جورنيكا بيكاسو؟ أم هو عمل ملحمي من نوع مختلف!