after an unfortunate long hiatus from my blog, i'm back, and hopefully for awhile, with updates on all things krossbreed.
one of the recent things i participated in was the khatt foundation type design workshop. as many of you know, most of my works are illustrative & figurative based, generally lacking any form of typographic elements. in addition, my arabic is not as good as it should be! so taking this workshop allowed to challenge myself by developing both my type design skills & arabic!
each participant was assigned 1-2 letters from the arabic alphabet, and to create a typeface with the city of dubai as their inspiration. i decided to be inspired by the silhouettes of traditional objects found here; from coffee pots to arches in traditional houses. during the 5-day workshop, there was a lot of sketching, critiquing & developing each person's typeface. in the end, each designed letter (which was unique and varied from each other) was combined to create a new font/typeface called 'khabsa' (which translates to 'mess'!)
after creating the typeface, each participant was then asked to create a poster to represent their designed letter & the khabsa font. in my poster, i decided to use the phrase 'last minute mess', as it relates to the aesthetic of the typeface, and also my rushed attempt at making a cool poster in a limited time-frame! i think i did pretty well if i say so myself!
i entered the workshop thinking that this was not for me, but to my surprise, came through unscathed! i'm really glad i took the workshop, & know that this will definitely nurture my design work from here on out.
i definitely need to say a few thank you's: to the tashkeel team for asking me to be a part of it all, the workshop leaders, including the khatt foundation's Huda S. AbiFares for offering a great workshop, & also Pascal Zoghbi & Lara Assouad Khoury for truly being inspirational... 
