In 2021, the London-based, Beirut-born Samar Maakaroun based Proper to Left, a design company that straddles cultures and typographic traditions. Specializing in designing for hybrid manufacturers, the multidisciplinary workforce speaks seven languages and crosses three generations, working to fluidly combine worlds and cultures throughout naming, model technique, model methods and identities. An instance of their language-hopping, culture-crossing strategy brilliantly manifests within the typographic venture “29 Phrases for 29 Letters,” which explores translation and the fluidity of that means via design.
Maakaroun lately joined Pentagram as a accomplice. “In an more and more globalized world, Samar embraces the fluidity and nuances of id, taking these complexities as a supply of artistic inspiration. Her work explores the areas in between, the place cultures and languages intersect, combine, align or diverge,” a press launch notes. I lately spoke with Maakaroun concerning the growing roles that non-Latin alphabets are enjoying in design.
The variety of non-Latin languages has grown up to now 20 years. These languages, which had been as soon as hidden, at the moment are extra seen on-line.
Technological developments undoubtedly assist, as the convenience and accessibility of software program facilitate the construct of typefaces, like glyphs, in addition to exponentially elevated visible publicity to new work. And crucially, a proliferation of archival documentation, like, for instance, the Arabic Design Archive that launched this yr. Entry is a lot simpler in the present day, and so it’s a very thrilling time to be working with a number of scripts and languages.
And the way did you develop into concerned?
I suppose my involvement started instinctively, as all through my life, I used to be crossing linguistic borders in search of connections: I grew up in an Arabic talking nation, studied in a French faculty, which was adopted by an American college, till settling down within the U.Ok. for my postgraduate research. To register at AUB (the American College of Beirut), I nearly handed my English examination, with solely two further factors out of a rating of 1,000. And so I began studying about design in a language I used to be not but fluent in. I clearly keep in mind referring to the roads of Beirut being filled with debossings, versus potholes, just because I discovered the phrase “debossing” previous to studying “pothole.” This journey meant that I used to be seeing the world via design terminology. Afterward in London, fluent in English, I nonetheless discovered myself deciphering the nuance in communication, expressions, humor, in addition to silences.
That is most likely a typical expertise to anybody studying a brand new language, and it naturally makes us query accuracy and precision inside our native languages, the learnt ones, and the way some ideas journey or not.
All that’s to say, terminology, cultural nuance, language and its type—typography—have all the time been richly generative and private to me.
“Proper to Left” is a superb title for a studio working with Arabic linguistics. What has been the response to your work?
The response was humbling—for that I’ll ceaselessly be grateful. Earlier than founding Proper to Left, I operated as a solo designer and marketing consultant, so folks knew my title first earlier than the studio. It took slightly time to assemble the braveness and arrange my very own studio, and it was after taking the plunge that I found the statistics on what number of design studios had been based by ladies within the U.Ok.—it’s fairly stunning. Maybe this lack of expertise labored in my favor. And a couple of yr in, Pentagram knocked on our door; we should have been doing one thing proper.
In all honesty, I didn’t have a marketing strategy or a technique when beginning off. It was 2021, simply after the primary lockdown. I employed two latest graduates who had been recent out of design faculty—each of whom shall be becoming a member of me at Pentagram—and we collaborated with folks everywhere in the world, in addition to pursuing facet tasks and internet hosting talks on the studio. Loads of completely happy moments, a number of onerous work, a powerful group of fellow designers, and naturally some inevitable errors that taught me worthwhile classes. I’m so glad I made the plunge, I wouldn’t commerce it for something.
Making phrases specific feeling and intention is a problem. What has been your most satisfying consequence, and what has been probably the most difficult? Particularly with Arabic sorts.
It’s so troublesome to decide on one! Maybe probably the most satisfying was 29 phrases for 29 letters. There was no consumer temporary, simply an concept that slowly took form, which I nonetheless replace every so often. The concept is straightforward in a manner: a collection of phrases for each letter, associated to meals, tradition, design, politics.
The primary phrase, Zankha, describes a scent that’s not acquainted to Europeans, which I discovered myself explaining time and again to folks in London who couldn’t determine it, as they didn’t have a time period for it. I then tackled the alphabet, drew the phrases, and labored with Miguel Desport, who animated a number of the phrases. I defined the meanings by equating it to one thing comparable in English, shared schematics (some phrases had been just like ideas he knew from Portuguese, like, for instance, “Tarab” and “Saudade” are usually not too far off), and thru a course of that felt someplace between design and play, I ended up with a full set that sits on my web site.
Most difficult venture: effectively, it’s good to have challenges generally, it retains us on our toes, however usually tasks with many stakeholders throughout languages might be difficult to navigate. I keep in mind engaged on a venture for a heritage website, and we got here up with a design that built-in two languages, one within the silhouette of the location, and the opposite sitting confidently beneath, eliminating the necessity for a number of belongings and creating one unified environment friendly answer. The letters had been recognizable within the silhouette, and the silhouette recognizable within the phrase. In a presentation to the consumer, the query of legibility got here up, and with a room filled with principally English-speaking consultants advising the consumer, the work sadly obtained misplaced in translation. I’ll at some point hopefully make one thing out of all of the work that will get misplaced in translation …
Now that you’re a new Pentagram accomplice, will your specialty be extra of Proper to Left, or will you broaden to different typographies?
Good query. My workforce and I are designers firstly. I’m actually happy with the multilingual experience we convey to our work, however the driving ethos of every little thing we do is certainly about creation and co-creation, with the flexibility to journey between totally different worlds, in quite a lot of scripts, making the most effective of each, and figuring out recent views by embracing discoveries and connections. Our tasks will contain scripts and cultures of many sorts, generally multilingual and generally not.
What is for certain is that we are going to develop at Pentagram by collaborating, taking part, and exchanging concepts with the group and their groups.
What fascinating/thrilling venture is in your plate in the intervening time?
We’re simply ending a guide for the charity Skatepal, which I’m actually excited to see on the earth. It’s heading to the printer shortly, and follows on from a earlier venture about meals, known as Sahtein. The brand new guide is all about studying Arabic, and encompasses a survey that requested Arabic audio system all over the world to contribute their favourite sentence, in addition to their private tales about their relationship to the language. (You can [call it] a collaborative model of 29 Phrases. There are sayings, proverbs and phrases that don’t journey precisely into English, all designed with a sure playfulness of shapes and types. I led the design with my workforce, creating 21 typographic illustrations for a corresponding collection of contributions from the surveys. Some had been answered in Arabic, some had been English peppered with Arabic. The consequence speaks to 3 kinds of customers—those that converse Arabic solely, English solely, and bilingual audio system. For this, we divided the guide horizontally utilizing the pagination putting English on the prime and the Arabic on the backside, all the time retaining the questions in the identical place on the web page. This implies readers don’t have to learn in a linear manner, from left to proper, or vice versa. They will navigate their very own familiarity with both language, and select what to learn sporadically. This hopefully permits for various experiences catered to the talents of the customers.
