The making-of our season’s greetings

To mark the beginning of 2011, and the launch of our studio, we ventured into a play-dough session where we had great fun confectioning our mini-mes. These were designed to star in the first maajoun greeting card.

The process was simple, somewhat meditative, and definitely messy! A full account of the operation can be viewed on our flickr page. Continue reading…

Season’s greetings

Arek wins Granshan 2010

Arek comes first in Granshan’s Armenian text typefaces category, and takes home the competition’s Grand Prize! The third International Eastern Type Design Competition for Armenian, Cyrillic and Greek typefaces, took place on Sep. 9 to 12, during the ATypI conference in Dublin.

Developed during my studies at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague (KABK), Arek is an Armenian typeface initially designed to be used for schoolbooks. A modern interpretation of the ancient Armenian script used in old manuscripts, it currently comprises an upright and cursive style in two weights; regular and black. Arek is a typeface rich in various OpenType features such as ligatures and contextual alternates, developed to remain true to the original structure of Armenian letter shapes. Continue reading…

Shimal/Noord: The first Arabic travel guide to the Netherlands

A group of 22 artists and designers from the Netherlands, Egypt and the Middle East have met in Amsterdam this summer (Jul-Sep 2010) for a mapping project initiated by the Mediamatic foundation.

The different mapping exercises have resulted in an exhibition and a travel guide which was published as a supplement in one of Amsterdam’s most highly circulated dailies Het Parool. Maajoun was happy to lead the design team which was responsible for the identity of the project, and the design of the travel guide. This experience was one of a kind for us: it was the first time we work within such a big team of artists, designers, researchers, editors, writers and translators. And the first time our work results in a roomful of printed matter: more than 106.000 copies of the guide were printed at one go! Continue reading…