Category: Design

  • iOS7′s design: European minimalism triumphing over American quirkiness and fun?

    Yesterday I had my first chance to use iOS7. I played with it for an hour on an iPad (actually my mother’s iPad which my younger brother has used to check out the iOS 7 beta releases). Before showing it to me, he showed it to my 10 year old son, who certainly can be…

  • Google’s design mess: Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich adds to the problem

    That lock screen looks promising, doesn’t it. That’s how Google’s newest version of Android looks. It is a major release of Android, and one of its major features was to supposedly make its design “lovable”. As Android’s design chief Matias Duarte himself said: people sort of respected Android, but no one loved it. Its latest…

  • The Nokia N9: a phone for real rebels (and normal people too)

    The Nokia N9 has a strange story. It’s an exciting story. It’s a sad story. It’s an amazing story that is still unfolding. But if you walk today into any of the shops of Amman’s “mobile phone district” near the 7th Circle, you might not even feel that there is a whole saga around the…

  • Taj Mall opens: the (still dusty) crown of Jordan’s shopping?

       The opening of a major mall in Jordan in this post-financial-crisis era is certainly an event to watch. We live in very different times compared to, say, 2005, when we were awash in Gulf money and grand real estate dreams. Can developers and retailers pull off another mall in a market were people are…

  • A universal logo for human rights: vote for your favorite now

    A few months ago I was appointed as a jury member of an amazing global design competition. The aim: to create a universally accepted logo for human rights. Peace has its symbol. Religions have their symbols. Global non profits and corporations also have their all-present symbols. But universal human rights, which have become part of…

  • Amman the FFilm: a font, a city, and a piece of my life..

    From a message I sent Yanone, the designer of the FF Amman typeface after watching a preview of this film he created. “Ok.. I just watched the entire film. On my iPad.. The film had a strange effect on me. Somehow it encapsulated my career and life for the last 10 years. It’s not just…

  • Arabic children books (again): force feeding your kids trash

    Back to one of my favorite things to rant about. Arabic children books. I’ve been helping out a little with teaching my 2nd grade kid with Arabic reading. Now don’t get me started about the official curriculum for Jordanian second graders. But I will say this much: the design is horrible. And I’ve been comparing…

  • Wamda: it started with a spark, now in beta!

    For the past seven months, our company duo, SYNTAX and Spring has been working on their most revolutionary web project to date. What was just a sketchy idea by early 2010, has become a groundbreaking, living, breathing web venture: Wamda.com, a hub that, for the first time, creates a focal point for the Middle East’s…

  • Rescue downtown Amman from the “Bab Al-7ara” attack!

    King Faisal Square in 1958. From Getty Images: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3378711/Hulton-Archive Does the Amman Municipality and do Ammanis want that Amman’s downtown is turned into a a cheap-looking touristic area? Because that’s EXACTLY what is happening at an alarming speed. I had breakfast at Hashem, the famous Hummous and Fuul restaurant yesterday and then went for a…

  • This Tuesday: Come to Al-Balad Theater and meet the new (type)face of Amman

    SYNTAX and Al-Balad Theater present: “The New (Type)face of Amman” German type-design rising star Yanone will be telling the story of his Amman typeface, created for the Amman Municipality’s “Amman Brand” project in collaboration with SYNTAX. The result of this project is now “FF Amman”, a professional typeface marketed worldwide by FontShop, as one of…

  • Wamda, a hub for the region’s entrepreneurs and change-makers will go into private-beta soon

    Nothing like being able to start showing people what I’ve been immersed in the past few months! It’s been a crazy journey for the team at SYNTAX and Spring and it will only get crazier. What was a sketchy idea a few months ago has turned into a full fledged project with a powerful vision:…

  • Nokia N900: A monster. A good monster.

    Every object, every product, says something about the people behind it. In the old, pre-industrial days you would meet your carpenter, your blacksmith and your potter. People behind life’s object where more visible. Today, we don’t see the people behind the objects that define our lives. The creation of these objects requires the cooperation of…