Breakfast In The Desert

by Besik Turazashvili for Designing Abu Dhabi, January 2012

La Epoca de Buenos Aires

Model: Katherine Vostricova Photographer: Irene Perminova Designer: Beso Turazashvili Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE

Model: Katherine Vostricova

Photographer: Irene Perminova

Designer: Beso Turazashvili

Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE

New Project with HAIR

Last day of DESIGNING ABU DHABI.  Today we had the last inside class day and it was absolutely amazing since I learnt one more time how creative and interesting our group is. We all showed our personal designs of three projects and one of them was Design of Catalogue for Wasel Safwan. This project will be my final team design but I was really happy to work on it independently and show my initial ideas on the catalogue cover and poster.  My cover shows Wasel himself wearing the national clothes and his gutra’s material looks like one of his paintings that represents the mixture of the Emirati culture and art in Wasel’s life. For the poster I decided to use the hour glass with send but on the bottom we can see the sand dune covered with Wasels’s painting and there are the shapes flying in the air inside the hour glass. There is also Wasel near the hour glass and we see him painting insid of it that symbolizes the thinking and emotional process while he is creating art. I decided to call the exhibition LINE because the lines Wasel paints show his ideas and different directions that he follows during the life. I also used Gotham font since it is an official font of NYU Abu Dhabi where the exhibition will take place. The final design will be ready by Thursday and I think our group is really excited to work together on the project. Wait for the news… 

Last day of DESIGNING ABU DHABI. 


Today we had the last inside class day and it was absolutely amazing since I learnt one more time how creative and interesting our group is. We all showed our personal designs of three projects and one of them was Design of Catalogue for Wasel Safwan. This project will be my final team design but I was really happy to work on it independently and show my initial ideas on the catalogue cover and poster. 

My cover shows Wasel himself wearing the national clothes and his gutra’s material looks like one of his paintings that represents the mixture of the Emirati culture and art in Wasel’s life. For the poster I decided to use the hour glass with send but on the bottom we can see the sand dune covered with Wasels’s painting and there are the shapes flying in the air inside the hour glass. There is also Wasel near the hour glass and we see him painting insid of it that symbolizes the thinking and emotional process while he is creating art.

I decided to call the exhibition LINE because the lines Wasel paints show his ideas and different directions that he follows during the life. I also used Gotham font since it is an official font of NYU Abu Dhabi where the exhibition will take place.

The final design will be ready by Thursday and I think our group is really excited to work together on the project. Wait for the news… 

Photography and design by Besik Turazashvili CHANEL

Photography and design by Besik Turazashvili

CHANEL

Helvetica - the perfect perfection. It is impossible to watch the film “helvetica” produced by Gary Hustwit and not to fall in love  with this font. I knew before that Helvetica had been used a lot but I would never realize that Helvetica is almost EVERYWHERE. Being designed in 1957 it still continues to be loved by the leading companies and is used not just in the United States but in most of European countries and Middle East.  But why would FENDI use the same font as does use Nestle or American Apparel? I think the answer is that it never looks the same. It is not like Zapfino that will be recognized anywhere. Helvetica is the unique type of font that becomes easily associated with a specific brand. It is beautiful but its main purpose is not make itself visible and recognizable but make the brand it represents different from all others that use Helvetica as well. That is why it is so popular. I myself use Helvetica a lot. It looks amazing but at the same time it is very easy to read and is among the classic fonts used for papers, for example. There are few fonts like Helvetica and I guess that is why I do not know any other films made about a font.  

Helvetica - the perfect perfection.

It is impossible to watch the film “helvetica” produced by Gary Hustwit and not to fall in love  with this font. I knew before that Helvetica had been used a lot but I would never realize that Helvetica is almost EVERYWHERE. Being designed in 1957 it still continues to be loved by the leading companies and is used not just in the United States but in most of European countries and Middle East. 

But why would FENDI use the same font as does use Nestle or American Apparel? I think the answer is that it never looks the same. It is not like Zapfino that will be recognized anywhere. Helvetica is the unique type of font that becomes easily associated with a specific brand. It is beautiful but its main purpose is not make itself visible and recognizable but make the brand it represents different from all others that use Helvetica as well. That is why it is so popular.

I myself use Helvetica a lot. It looks amazing but at the same time it is very easy to read and is among the classic fonts used for papers, for example. There are few fonts like Helvetica and I guess that is why I do not know any other films made about a font.  

Georgian Alphabet Today when I was working on my project I thought what if there was a font for each word, so that when you read a word you do not have to know what it means but can just understand its meaning by how it looks like. I shared the idea with my mother and she was shocked that I did not know Anuka Kvezereli, a young but very talented Georgian designer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. I saw some of her work and was amazed by some of her projects that are realized in Georgian and English. Georgian calligraphy is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. It does not look like any other alphabets and and is used just in Georgia. There are three alphabets but just one is used nowadays. None of the alphabets have lower and upper cases. The first Georgian alphabet was created in 326 AD when Iberian Empire (modern Georgia) became Christian and a new alphabet for writing the religious manuscripts was needed. The first alphabet is thought to be strongly influenced by Greek alphabet since Greece had a big power in the region of the Black Sea.  The second alphabet was created in the 9th century and it was affected by Pahlavi or Middle Iranian script. The latest script was designed four hundred years ago and is mostly used today. So, the alphabet changes so often because when the society feels like changing they just do it. Alphabet represents the historical period of a country and can say a lot about its background. So, nowadays there have already been made many changes in the form and shape of some letters and I think the official change will happen soon. Coming back, to an interesting font designed by Anuka Kvezereli, I personally like it very much. Of course, not all words can be written using this font but I think it’s quite interesting to see each millimeter of these words and allow your imagination and fantasy work instead of you. 

Georgian Alphabet

Today when I was working on my project I thought what if there was a font for each word, so that when you read a word you do not have to know what it means but can just understand its meaning by how it looks like. I shared the idea with my mother and she was shocked that I did not know Anuka Kvezereli, a young but very talented Georgian designer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. I saw some of her work and was amazed by some of her projects that are realized in Georgian and English.

Georgian calligraphy is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. It does not look like any other alphabets and and is used just in Georgia. There are three alphabets but just one is used nowadays. None of the alphabets have lower and upper cases.

The first Georgian alphabet was created in 326 AD when Iberian Empire (modern Georgia) became Christian and a new alphabet for writing the religious manuscripts was needed. The first alphabet is thought to be strongly influenced by Greek alphabet since Greece had a big power in the region of the Black Sea.  The second alphabet was created in the 9th century and it was affected by Pahlavi or Middle Iranian script. The latest script was designed four hundred years ago and is mostly used today.

So, the alphabet changes so often because when the society feels like changing they just do it. Alphabet represents the historical period of a country and can say a lot about its background. So, nowadays there have already been made many changes in the form and shape of some letters and I think the official change will happen soon.

Coming back, to an interesting font designed by Anuka Kvezereli, I personally like it very much. Of course, not all words can be written using this font but I think it’s quite interesting to see each millimeter of these words and allow your imagination and fantasy work instead of you. 

Islamic Architecture We had a very informative and interesting lecture about Islamic Architecture by Robert Hillebrand, one of the most known and influential fellows in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Professor told us some basic and fundamental facts about different styles of Mosques, which is divided according to the location. There are divisions between Arab, Persian and Turkish Mosque architectural designs. Arab Mosques tend to have more open space and gardens, while Turkish Mosques do not have courtyards. It was also interesting to hear why the European institutions of education and health, for example, are so known through history but all the Western people know about the Arab World is a very strong Islamic religious institution. So, Professor Hillebrand explained that the reason is that all these institutions did exist inside of the Mosque. So, Mosque was not just a place where people could pray but it was where children got educated and could ger basic knowledge about sciences and Islam. It was also a place where homeless people and widows could find a new house. I think this lecture gave me better understanding of importance of Mosque and its role in lives of local people who I interact every day. 

Islamic Architecture

We had a very informative and interesting lecture about Islamic Architecture by Robert Hillebrand, one of the most known and influential fellows in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Professor told us some basic and fundamental facts about different styles of Mosques, which is divided according to the location.

There are divisions between Arab, Persian and Turkish Mosque architectural designs. Arab Mosques tend to have more open space and gardens, while Turkish Mosques do not have courtyards. It was also interesting to hear why the European institutions of education and health, for example, are so known through history but all the Western people know about the Arab World is a very strong Islamic religious institution. So, Professor Hillebrand explained that the reason is that all these institutions did exist inside of the Mosque. So, Mosque was not just a place where people could pray but it was where children got educated and could ger basic knowledge about sciences and Islam. It was also a place where homeless people and widows could find a new house.

I think this lecture gave me better understanding of importance of Mosque and its role in lives of local people who I interact every day. 

Photo and design by Besik Turazashvili Painting by Wasel Safwan Wasel. Today I had a fantastic chance to meet Wasel Safwan, an Emirati artist and architect who is known not just in the region but is recognized around the world (my Mom really likes his art). Wasel started the class with a short film about the world in the way he sees it. The film seemed to me very personal and honest since the it was produced by him. Seeing him in film not just giving a speech but being at home, in his art gallery or travelling abroad gave me a better and greater perspective about the artist. I talked to Wasel after the class and he seemed very excited to visit NYU Abu Dhabi and share his experience with us, beginner designers.  One of the projects that we are going to realize is the cover page of Wasel’s works’ catalogue. I am really interested in it since I worked in a famous Art Gallery last summer and one of my projects was designing a work catalogue for a young artists and then organizing his personal exhibition in the gallery. Meeting such people always inspires me and after seeing Wasel I just want to create what I like and never stop…

Photo and design by Besik Turazashvili

Painting by Wasel Safwan

Wasel.

Today I had a fantastic chance to meet Wasel Safwan, an Emirati artist and architect who is known not just in the region but is recognized around the world (my Mom really likes his art).

Wasel started the class with a short film about the world in the way he sees it. The film seemed to me very personal and honest since the it was produced by him. Seeing him in film not just giving a speech but being at home, in his art gallery or travelling abroad gave me a better and greater perspective about the artist. I talked to Wasel after the class and he seemed very excited to visit NYU Abu Dhabi and share his experience with us, beginner designers. 

One of the projects that we are going to realize is the cover page of Wasel’s works’ catalogue. I am really interested in it since I worked in a famous Art Gallery last summer and one of my projects was designing a work catalogue for a young artists and then organizing his personal exhibition in the gallery.

Meeting such people always inspires me and after seeing Wasel I just want to create what I like and never stop…

Idea and direction by Besik Turazashvili

Frida. Enferma Soledad. Sick Loneliness. 

Today during the lunch professor mentioned how hard it is for relatives of famous people find their own way in life and make people see them as personalities but not as a shadow of a famous mom or husband, for example.

I made this film about one of my favorite artists Frida Kahlo, who was a Mexican Naïve style supporter. Frida is mostly known for her self-portraits, which became a type of her diary since seeing them it is quite easy to understand what was happening in her life at a moment. As she once said, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Diego Rivera was one of the most known and influential artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. And he was a husband of Frida. I decided to make this film to show how much I respect Kahlo because she has never been a shadow of Rivera and she did not become so known and loved because of him. She had a very difficult life in a post revolutionary Mexico, she was sick since her childhood, she had problems with her back, which made her spend many years on a bad, she could not have children, what was her greatest tragedy but all this did not break her but inspired to her amazing art that feels so realistic, natural and full of pain.

Wolff Olins “BRAND IS NOT MARKETING”

 

On Monday, January 10th, we visited Wolff Olins office in Dubai. Wolff Olins is one of the top brand consultancies in the world, which was founded in 1965 in London and its Dubai office was open in 2008.  I was amazed how they met us since the company has so many clients and just 15 staff in Dubai and I thought our meeting would be really short and they would just tell us basic information about Wolff Olins. However, the workshop they organized for us was one of the most interesting and productive activities I have had in my life.

The presentation of the company was just so beautifully made that you just wanted to work with them right after the graduation. I always thought that such companies have hundreds of professionals working on their projects and dealing with problems and actually most of the competitors of Wolff Olins are like that. What makes Wolff Olins different? I think it is just how united and friendly their company looked like. They are just 15 in Dubai and, of course, they all know each other well. They have their own kitchen where they cook and have gatherings! So, it just looks like a friendly family. Of course, everyone has his or her specialization but they all work on the projects together and thus create an amazing and diverse final product.

The most exciting part was when we were divided into 3 teams and we had to come up with a marketing idea of the new branded water produced in the UAE. The ideas were so diverse: my team, for example, was concentrated on the water of the Premium class and our goal was to connect the water with Emirati roots and heritage, so that people will feel privileged drinking the water.  

The clients they work with are Unilever, Mercedes, Apple, London Olympic Games 2012, OI, GE and many other leading companies all around the world.

When I was there everything made me feel happy – design of the building, reception, presentation, their behavior. At the beginning I asked them a question “How does a brand consultancy brand itself?” And I think I found the answer.

Le Didot by Firmin Didot

Firmin Didot, a creator of a font called Didot, was a French type founder and printer of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century. He is an inventor of Stereotype or Cliché, which is the metal printing plate created for the actual printing of pages, what made the book printing industry cheaper and thus more accessible for people from all social classes.Firmin Didot is an inventor of the Modern classification of typefaces, which have a big contrast between thick and thin strokes, what made books more legible. 

François Ganeau François Ganeau is a “father” of a font called Vendôme. He lived in France and worked for Fonderie Olive, which is also known for designing Banco and Antique Olive. He travelled a lot to Italy, Greece and Egypt and every time was bringing some typical type of art that also affected his work. Ganeau was painting , decorating and making sculptures for several families for a long period. Since Ganeau was a sculptor and worked as a designer for different theatres, we can see that “three dimensional element is clearly evident in his type [Vendôme].”  He was also an amazing play writer and maybe that is why it seems that the letters designed by him seem to be acting, each with its own role but all of them as a big united theatre troupe.

François Ganeau

François Ganeau is a “father” of a font called Vendôme. He lived in France and worked for Fonderie Olive, which is also known for designing Banco and Antique Olive. He travelled a lot to Italy, Greece and Egypt and every time was bringing some typical type of art that also affected his work.

Ganeau was painting , decorating and making sculptures for several families for a long period. Since Ganeau was a sculptor and worked as a designer for different theatres, we can see that “three dimensional element is clearly evident in his type [Vendôme].”  He was also an amazing play writer and maybe that is why it seems that the letters designed by him seem to be acting, each with its own role but all of them as a big united theatre troupe.

Vendôme  Vendôme is one of my favorite fonts. It was created by François Ganeau in 1952 in France. At that time he worked at Fonderie Olive.  Vendôme took some of its characteristics from the fonts designed by Claude Garamond and Jeanne Jannon earlier but its main difference was the big amount of serifs of different sizes.  When I look at the text written in Vendôme, it totally appears to me as three dimensional, what makes it so unusual and different from others. What is more, Vendôme means “pleasure” from French and thus it is a symbol of a simple and classic French beauty and “Vendôme is French as a baguette, proud and dismissive”, as it is mentioned in Just My Type by Simon Garfield.  Vendôme is still widely used in France and since it looks so fashionable, different companies and restaurants try to attract the customers by using Vendôme’s beauty.

Vendôme 

Vendôme is one of my favorite fonts. It was created by François Ganeau in 1952 in France. At that time he worked at Fonderie Olive.  Vendôme took some of its characteristics from the fonts designed by Claude Garamond and Jeanne Jannon earlier but its main difference was the big amount of serifs of different sizes.

 When I look at the text written in Vendôme, it totally appears to me as three dimensional, what makes it so unusual and different from others. What is more, Vendôme means “pleasure” from French and thus it is a symbol of a simple and classic French beauty and “Vendôme is French as a baguette, proud and dismissive”, as it is mentioned in Just My Type by Simon Garfield.

 Vendôme is still widely used in France and since it looks so fashionable, different companies and restaurants try to attract the customers by using Vendôme’s beauty.

Didot, tu es trop belle!

Didot is an amazing font designed by Firmin Didot in 1784 in Paris, France. The main goal of a designer was to create an easily legible font which would well contrast on the paper and “Didot became the French standard for over a century” (Bryony Gomes-Palazio; Graphic Design Referenced). 

Didot is thought to be a neoclassical font and is one of the symbols of the Enlightenment. Since it looks so beautiful and classy, Didot is still used by the top fashion magazines such as Bazaar and Vogue on their covers, which I must say, is a big privilege for such an old font. But the basics of beauty canons and esthetics always stay the same whatever the fashion looks like. (Bazaar and Vogue covers can be seen on the bottom. You can also see how much I love Audrey Hepburn, queen of femininity and humanity).

http://grooveshark.com/s/I+Follow+Rivers/3EE0mz?src=5