Daftar: An experimental design platform

Daftar: An experimental design platform

By Admin I : Having a low advertising season is probably considered the only positive aspect of this super hot Lebanese summer; We can dig deeper in design, observe, analyze, bullshit and even come across some impressive initiatives taking place in more than 1 field of visual arts.

During all our online journey, we have talked so much about our cultural identity that you probably got sick of it, but our new catch does totally cherish our local and regional cultural aspects and is faithful to documenting and promoting Arabic design/designers, artworks and most importantly Arabic typography; ‘Daftar‘ is an online publication of Arab arts, designs & expressions, strictly in Arabic, where every issue features a large selection of submitted artworks emerging from multidisciplinary (a fancy overused expression) backgrounds using open media, which is somehow close to Bak and other magazines, but still considered innovative in the Arab world.

‘Daftar’ is already in its 3rd issue and proving to reach a quite large audience of design enthusiasts,  even if some of the art works look too generic or even inspired by certain styles and movements while other show great potentials using genuine techniques.

What intrigued me in ‘Daftar’ as an initiative is the role that such publication can serve, precisely talking about documenting design works of Arabs that are losing interest in questioning their own backgrounds, or even producing Arab inspired design works, strictly following the worldwide reach for Arabic typography without going deeper in their research. On another note, this online platform will play a more important role on a long term, serving an analytical purpose, where we can assess our current visual arts situation through featured art works that can reflect young designers’ disciplines.

‘Daftar’ is one of the very few steps towards recreating an Arab design scene, and hopefully reformulating a whole audience’s perception far from the Rana Salam/Nada Debs/Reza Abedini influences, flooding the commercial scene with their products and fake copycatters!

Keskun! (Just saying cheers in Arabic you sick frustrated morons!)