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 quick walk [...]

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 largest bilingual font [...]

The Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Jabal Luweibdeh will host the exhibition “Open City: Refuge Urbanism” which is part of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009-10 (IABR), opening today Sunday 18 July 2010, at 6 pm.

Refuge Urbanism (Part of the Diwan Collaborative Research Network, directed by Philipp Misselwitz & [...]

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: building [...]

In 1992, my mother planted a little Agave Americana in my parent’s farm in the Jordanian village Aluk, 25 km north of Amman. Over the years, this agave grew and grew to a degree where my parents started thinking of removing it. Agaves have very sharp spikes that can give you nasty pain and can [...]

It sounds like an offer no true music lover in Arabia can refuse: Buy a very capable touch screen smartphone from Nokia and get access to an all-you-can-eat music library of 4 million tracks for free for 12 months. And you get to keep the music you download for ever too.
That, in a nutshell, is [...]

Can someone please explain this to me: brands and slogans that totally loose their edge when introduced into Arab markets.

Here are three examples:

I bought this shaving cream the other day. The tagline/product identifier say “Cool Kick” in English. The Arabic translates into “Cool Touch”. Oh how soft and nice!

Arab men can’t take a kick.. They [...]