Abdulkader Arnaout’s innovative, direct and indelible posters mostly designed for the Ministry of Culture have shifted the way the Syrian public perceived design. His work is reflective of a strong modernist feel that was unfamiliar at the time. He introduced design as a profession moving away from the arts and crafts while highlighting the communicative function of graphic design.
Arnaout presented a different approach for dealing with design parameters and challenges, and reacted to complex design briefs by creating intelligent, unconventional and well-conceived creative solutions. He was a man of vision: his artwork had a great impact on the generation of artists who graduated from the visual communication program at the Faculty of Arts in Damascus during the last two and a half decades (1967-1992). This book highlights a compilation of Arnaout’s salient design work—his numerous poster designs for theater, art exhibitions, and cultural events—and presents his outstanding contribution to the development of graphic design and typography in Syria and the Arab World.
About the Artist
Abdulkader Arnaout is a pioneer of graphic design in Syria. He has was one of the first graphic design practitioners, and was renown in his native Syria as a modernist designer and artist. A passionate poet, painter, typographer, and designer, he designed more than 600 posters and around 300 book covers among other design applications such as Arabic fonts and logos.
About the Author
Yasmine Nachabe Taan is Associate professor of Design and Design History at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut.
She hold a PhD in Art History and Communications Studies from McGill University. Her research focus is on design writing and research, visual culture and gender representation, design, media, photography and visual cultutre in the Middle Eastand North Africa. She publishes articles on visual culture in a number of international journals. She has illustrated more than twenty children’s books and has participated in a number of residencies in Berlin, Cairo, Beirut and Bratislava. Her artwork has been exhibited in New York, Berlin and Beirut.
About the Publisher
Khatt Books is a specialized publishing house, established in 2010 as a commercial arm of the Khatt Foundation. Khatt Books focuses on topics such as typography, graphic design, architecture, other applied and visual arts from or dealing with the MENA region.
