Only when the last tree has died,
and the last river been poisoned,
and the last fish been caught,
will we realise we cannot eat money.

— Cree Proverb.

If you wish to have this illustration on your desktop click on this link to download it in a desktop friendly format.

I already have it on mine:

20th of june is the World Refugee Day. and this is an illustrated calendar desktop for june 2011, that you can download by clicking on the picture above.
after stating the obvious, comes some more interesting details what is this illustration exactly? and why now?
this desktop illustration is part of  the social calendar project initiated by COSV. in october 2010 and in a previous collaboration with COSV Fouad and Rafic at the Lucca Comics & Games Festival, the people at COSV felt that the team we created was a great team with great talent. and they wanted to do a project that continue joining us together, even after going back to lebanon after the festival. so they initiated this project where each month an illustrator does a desktop image for a specific world social day in that month. the desktop images are then sent by email to many people over the world.

i always felt that drawing is a tool in my hands, even more like a gift, that i should be using for good causes. this project makes me somehow fulfill this sweet responsibility.

the following where my words when COSV asked me to explain about my drawing:
through this illustration i am trying to get an emotion across to you as a viewer. to make you put your shoes in the shoes of the refugees in the illustration. what if you were forced to leave your house your land and all your past behind?
hoping that this will leave you with a sense of empathy and a will to spread the word about this social injustice.

down there some details snapshots:

feedback is always appreciated. so tell me what you think about the illustration?
does it really get the feeling across?

also something that i would like to ask your opinion about:
for a second while drawing i thought that this illustration might be useless, thinking that it wouldn’t change the situation of any refugees in the world. but then it i realized that if i am not in a power of doing anything towards this social injustice the least i can do is acknowledging these people, telling them that we’re thinking about them, and that we know what it means to be in their position.
so, what do you think?  have you ever also had these thoughts?

this is one of the article illustrations i do each month for mawhiba magazine.
this one about banu musa.

mar7aba jami3an!!

i am back to blogging
enjoy the new look and the new posts!

i am one of the actors performing in this play.
as the poster is saying, this is not a play, it’s a series of scenes.
each one of us conceived his own scene, his own message, vision…
and this translated into dramatic, spiritual, romantic, dreamy, energetic and comic stands…

…something you will definitely enjoy!
i will not talk more about it, will leave you make your own impression after watching it

for those who are asking who we are:
we are a group of young people that have been attending a 7 month workshop at L’Atelier du JE. some of us decided to go on stage. “w stor ma shefet menna” is what came out
the play is supervised by Patricia Nammour and Câline Bernoty.

here’s the event on facebook.
here’s a beautiful article written by Rawad el Hoyek about the play

i did the designed the of the poster, as part of team .:there for design…
you can click on it to enlarge it

so much to share about this (experiences, videos, links, photos, photos, photos…).
i’ll share them after our last show.

P.S. reserve asap, because places are running out
call 01-363 328

don’t miss it!

if you already watched it, write your experiences in the comment.
i am sure you’ll explain about it much better then i do :p

.
did you know that cockroaches have family & friends which they recognize by their distinctive odors

• they have faster reflexes than humans; even faster than Michael Jordan’s
• they have one great big nerve on tails alerting them to danger from behind
• they breathe through their sides – not their noses
• they are able to make group decision-making and competition exists in cockroaches’ world
• a cockroach can live up to a week without its head. it only dies because it can’t drink
• they have a mosaic vision, which is excellent at detecting motion

and what we just do is kill it!

“alert everyone! alert!  please do not enter room!  a cockroach is living inside with it’s wife and kids. please evacuate the building… ”
“best way to kill cockroaches: hit it so hard so that you don’t hear its sound cracking”

they never killed poeple or raped girls. so why this mission of eliminating all cockroaches

why not like just holding it and putting it outside. w khalas!

another article illustration for “موهبة” Mawhiba (Saudi magazine aiming to encourage young talented people); this time about Graham Bell.

Bell was obsessed with sounds from since he started reasoning. the article tells how he was trying once to hear the sound of the corn plant growing up…
here’s where the title page illustration is from:

some illustrations from the article:

i was one of the participants of the project: Beyroutes, A guide to Beirut. the result of the project is a book that was launched last saturday (6 march 2010).

Beyroutes, unlike any other guide to Beirut, presents a whole different way of touring in Beirut… a way that takes “the human infrastructure as a point of departure”. it offers a variety of subjective explorations of the city and it’s layers. it  shows the “complexity of how one gets to know this city, its inhabitants, its buildings, and everyday life.”

i was one of many other illustrators, photographers, writers, artists… that were asked to explore a chosen region inside Beirut, to have a personal understanding of it, and express it in our way.

following is my contribution to this project. you can click on the image for a bigger view and better read

crops from the artworks:

this guide project and it’s preceding workshops were an initiative of the members of Studio Beirut, supported by Archis, Partizan Publik, and the Pearl Foundation.

here are some teasers of what you can find in this guide

this was a very small project for a friend Khajag Apelian who did his masters in type design. Khajak designed Arek -the type face that you can see in the pictures- as as a thesis for his masters. it’s an armenian typeface specifically designed for school books. for his type specimen book he chose two stories to illustrate:
La Fontaine – The Crow and the Fox . the second is an armenian tale about a mouse that lost her tail
so i did the following pencil drawings..

i was part of the team who worked on Vitrine’s visual creation, and communication material. and i have to say the crew working on this play is amazing!
i learned a lot during the process starting from Nehmeh’s patience and calmness even under stress, David‘s visual expertise, William‘s conceptional creative mind, and Elias calmness.
am going to watch today the final rehearsals and am already excited to see Joulia & Aida, the costumes, the make-ups, and hear Christelle Franca’s music (who’s gona be playing live btw).

go and watch it, great minds, great expertise, great artists, are behind that performance!!
it’s gona be played every thursday, friday, saturday and  sunday at 8:30 pm
at Al Madina theatre  starting tomorrow.

this is the poster, click on the image to see high-res image

some applications (flyer, bookmark, invitation card)

here’s the bookmark which was done before the poster on a very tight deadline

and the dusty window that i stole from a construction site near our studio
yes i returned it back! no i didn’t! haha
it’s where we erased the word Vitrine from.

i was part of the team working on the process of the new initiative by casfekra: createseats.com

in short the idea behind createseats is this: instead of buying those generic passe-par-tout gifts, casafekra aims to help create “thought-of” personal gifts that leave people feeling appreciated. read more on the blog post of casafekra: “the one with the personal secret…”

for this .:there for design… came up with the concept of “lamiss” the ashamed ostrich. “lamiss” was a perfect representation of  the feeling people get when they give those lame gifts. that’s because when the ostrich puts it’s head in the ground, most people perceive it’s action as shame or fear.

bref, i did the illustration of the first draft visual of the idea (at that time we were still thinking that “lamiss” is a person)

and i then worked with team .:there for design… developing the visual.
bellow you can see some of the visual process. to see the complete process, visit blog .:there for design…

and here’s the final result

the fun part was in the process! collecting tree leaves, dried fruits and flowers from a public garden next to our studio, cutting, gluing, photo-shooting, photo-retouching. again you can see it all on blog .:there for design…