Lebanese poster design 001

Lebanese poster design 001

By Admin N : In the land of the generic, the commercial and the inspired, it is always refreshing to see that genuine design is not dead, that the process of making a poster takes more than doing a collage of clip arts and slapping on it the info in 10 different fonts. It was on a wall on the Bliss Street of Hamra, lost amid a clutter of crappy posters that we spotted a couple we really liked, and I decided to write this post.

This particular poster is done for Nahnou’s campaign to reopen horsh Beirut to the public. More particularly, a public forum debate to discuss the challenges that stand against the reopening of horsh Beirut that took place in al madina theatre (Beirut).

The poster is a genius two color job, simple yet expressive; dominated by a very soothing light green that depicts the whole nature of the place. The visual itself is an illustration of life in the ‘horsh’, the line of expression is gesturally organic giving it a much friendlier approach and the view is distorted, adding a little fun and spontaneity to the general feel. The whole mood of the poster is very relaxed, as if you were actually there.

Now comes the typographical treatment where the awesome designer limited himself to two fonts: one custom made for the headline and a modern type for secondary information. Remember the golden rule people: less is more!

And thumbs up to the stencils they plastered all over the streets of Beirut, love it!

Now here’s another one that we fell in love with as soon as we saw it, the kamel el sawt poster is another 2 color job with a super brilliant sketchy-like illustration merging an embrace of a man and a woman with the land map of Palestine; each name of a Palestinian city is written in what seems to be a simplified human face. The visual itself is very powerful and touching.

As for the typographical treatment, here’s another examples of less is more. Once more we see a custom made font for the headline and a modern font for the body text.

We shall continue to wander the streets of Beirut looking for hidden gems in a sea of atrocities, shedding light on this forgotten part of design in Lebanon.