Research

New lectures on Geo-typographic issues, Erik Brandt
> CASE Design Institute. April 28-30, 2008 Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, MN Estados Unidis

announcing > geotÿpøgrafika blog. a site dedicated to research and experimentation
on global graphic and typographic issues. clickabove for a link announcing an international
graphic and typographic experiment open to all. yella, yella!

Human Re-Branding: Traces of Globalization from Doha, Qatar
Some few examples of a larger effort to document repainted brands on pick-up trucks.
Many workers in Doha take great pride in these old and often re-purposed vehicles,
preserving even "dead" brands like the ubiquitous Datsun, seen above with its heir,
Nissan. Both are hand-painted. © 2007 by Erik Brandt

> truck type

WallPaper Project in Grafik Magazine (UK) March 2007
See full text below. © 2007 by Erik Brandt
> wallpaper project
> grafik magazine

“I hate type,” she said. In the context of an advanced type class, these were three fateful words that
led me toward a vortex of despair, letterforms and diacritics swirling, ascenders and descenders
morphing into scimitars slicing apart my soul.

But so it was on the first day of my Typography III class here at Virginia Commonwealth University
in Doha, Qatar. I sat across a table from eight wonderful senior design students, all women: five Qatari,
one Egyptian, one Palestinian, and a young woman from Bosnia. All had fine reputations as hard
workers, but here was this startling, even horrifying admission – they hated type.

Where, I wondered, would my ambitious, perhaps naive, plan for dealing with the complexities
of balancing Arabic and Western typographic needs go from here?"

“We,” one student remarked, in a typical regional tendency to ascribe all opinions to a group
consciousness, “prefer working with image.”

She was right, look at their world today. The influx of visual imagery in Gulf countries, such as the
U.A.E. and Qatar, follows the vast amounts of petro-dollars and the forced-march lead of corporate
branding schemes, glass towers, gold, glitter, and other stereotypical iconic associations of quality
and desire. What could type offer them, they wondered, why bother? When confronted with such
questions, from any student, I find the introduction of hard work and tight deadlines appropriate.
I knew I had their trust, and I encouraged them to find questions and answers.

As luck would have it, I had recently been invited by Wolfgang Blüggel to participate in a group
project sponsored by the Teaching Designers Network, an international cooperative based in the
Freie Hochschule Freiburg in Germany. This year’s brief focused on a wallpaper project created
by Rachel Mahler, whose conceptual and typographic potential seemed perfect for my students,
and then there was the promise of that supreme typographic aid… the grid.

Another problem and equally difficult: printed Arabic, I think it fair to say, is equated today in
the world’s media-distorted consciousness with reversed out type on a green headband of angry
marching men, its perception accompanied then by the prejudice of contemporary politics and
clash of cultures. In the region itself, the most desirable objects and lifestyles bear the distinctive
imprint of Western values, visual tactics, and the resulting apparitions. I asked: how could we
use these surfaces to communicate the beauty of their language and celebrate
its typographic form?

The key was the conceptual approach: I urged them to examine the city and their language.
Doha is a labyrinth of veils: unending walled compounds, cordoned off construction sites, shaded
car windows and sheilas. Through photographs, presentations and discussions, the students took
apart their visual and linguistic cityscape. One student in particular focused on bi-lingual wayfinding
systems in the city streets, and the ineffectual and confusing typographic apparitions she found.
Something clicked with the whole group and there were, finally, questions.

Thus inspired, four weeks of ceaseless sketching and experimenting followed. Once they understood
that within a simple grid their typographic tools could find form and multiply almost effortlessly –
leaving them the chance to explore meaning, color, depth, texture, etc. – their resistance to type
weakened and they finally became immersed in the possibilities of each conglomerate.

In the end, it was difficult to help them find a way to stop – they began to discover the potential
for abstraction in form that can communicate as well. Some worked with metaphorical clusters that
referred to concepts or specific areas within the city, others worked purely abstractly. Last but not least,
and to my great satisfaction, they also became well acquainted with the demands of agonizing detail.
Interestingly, this process caused them to revisit their earlier projects with renewed vigor and scrutiny,
and they began exhibiting the humble obsessive-compulsive qualities that I treasure so much
in my young charges.

By and large, their finished designs reveal the hidden fascination with extremes in color and
design that simmer beneath the monochromatic world of the desert and black abayas. Their work
may displease, for example, a modernist’s affinity for the simple, but it should instead form a
perhaps surprising window into the graphic needs of these young women, as well as their influences
and potential. I leave them to determine the developing identity of their graphic and typographic design,
it is their world after all, and we can enjoy it with them for their sake, not for our own.

In my mind, only one thing was important: that they learned to love type as one should,
holding it in your hands, guiding it with your eye, and understanding it with your heart.

Grids Meet the Arabesque: Design Education in Doha Qatar
2007 College Art Association (CAA) Conference; New York, NY. Paper presentation on the trials
and tribulations of introducing a western-based design curriculum to Middle Eastern students.
Co-authored with Mary McLaughlin, much of the presentation will focus on the wallpaper project,
samples of which can be seen here:
> Wallpaper Project
> CAA info

Everyday Design: Great Finds from Around the World
AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural Design. Coming soon: Many of my photographs have been included
in this exhibition, which will be both land and web based. For more info, please visit:
> everydaydesign.org

Typographic Viruses: Doha, Qatar by Way of Dubai, Amsterdam, Istanbul, and Hong Kong
Presented at the 50th Annual ATypI Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. September 30, 2006
> ATypI - Association Typographique Internationale
> Reviewed by Yves Peters, Font Shop Unzipped

Abstract: Doha is a city that has literally sprung from the desert in the last fifty years. As it prepares
to host the 2006 Asian Games, new roads, stadiums, and other facilities are now rising from
the sand at an unprecedented rate. Along with this new infrastructure, foreign typographic values
are also being imported, taking shape in branding campaigns and other projections of public
typography (including storefront signage, wayfinding systems, etc.).

At issue is the state of the local vernacular and the importation of graphic and typographic
influences, which either benefit or flood the continuing development of that vernacular.
As a city and as a culture, Doha represents the ideal location to study the impact of economic
globalization trends and the consequences for indigenous typographic design. While petro-
dollars make the luxuries of the world easily accessible, their sudden influx and accompanying
visual strategies form a curious presence in a city still in search of itself.

In addition to Doha, I compared four urban typographic landscapes, from west to east,
as a way of contextualizing the future of this city: 1. Amsterdam, as an internationally recognized
design Mecca; 2. Istanbul, historically multi-cultural and pan-religious; 3. Hong Kong, as a study
in urban and typographic density; and 4. Dubai, as a regional example of the benefits and
excess of rampant urban growth.