Beirut Design Week Reviewed 2

By Admin N : Everyone who’s as dedicated as we are to the Beirut Design Week knows that he’ll basically spend the whole day running from one place to another, and what seems to be a day off turns out more chaotic than what we have on a regular; and still, we loved it! The vibe, the energy and watching the whole city coming alive is just enchanting.

What we called “our design tour” kicked off at the Mukhi sisters cross promo event at Beirut souks where we got to meet the oh so lovable sisters and checked out their collection of jewelry and got a bit spoiled with goodies. Of course, we had to drop by Zayan, their neighboring pop art store for a look at their colorful collection of clothes and bags, a style mixing vintage cuts with a modern practical feel that still looks original. The next stop was at PSLAB where we got a look at where all the magic happens, and believe me, it was quite worth it! PSLAB is a company that specializes in designing custom made conceptual lighting. We met the team who took us on a tour around their space and showed us the different working stations of each section of the company established on a campus that looks just like somewhere we’d like to spend all our time at!

Our tour continued with maajoun having an open studio exhibition where we got to see some of their works, from publications to posters to type, a very interesting approach to design that we already tackled in our blog, the visit was quite enjoyable and fun just like the guys at the studio and umm the delicious cake! (Who can possibly resist that?).

Altcity hamra was the next stop attending talks given by different speakers from different backgrounds; the talks started off with Joumana Ibrahim and her engaging talk about information design and the lack of data here in Lebanon. The information presented came out very interactive and proved that even though we lack data in this country but we still have very authentic substitutes enriching social studies with another layer that can somehow make up for inaccurate information; then came on Simon Mhanna and Linda Selwood Choueiry with a discussion about decision making and emotions, entitled: emotion flows in mindful design; started slow then ended with a series of questions and a debate, but proving how emotional thinking is important using rational means fastly rebutted their theory and made the whole quest less persuading!

Another not-so-convincing talk about design and creative entrepreneurship was given by Sofana Dahan and her guests, also practicing what they don’t actually preach since the 3 examples of entrepreneurs were originally coming from a family of entrepreneurs, or encouraged to follow such path. The talk sounded more like a dramatic stereotypical women rights lecture more than a debate about business and design, a topic to be tackled at a separate post as well.

Of course, every night, we attend the movie screening at the St. Nicolas stairs in Gemmayzeh to watch a movie and enjoy the 961 delicious beer that can easily make us drop some anger generated by some lack or organization, and an outrageously bad map, where people should find spots in Lebanon following street names, not landmarks (map designer apparently lives on Jupiter!)

Design Week is almost done, and we’re going to wrap up the week with a third post featuring more of the workshops’ outcomes, so if you’re enjoying the sun and the beach, move your freakin a**es and join this buzzing week you tanned blondies!