Naji El Mir in Conversation With Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès

Khatt Chronicles: Stories on Design from the Arab World

Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès interviews Lebanese-French Graphic Designer Naji El Mir about his beginnings in graphic design and animation. The discussion addresses the journey from homeland to becoming a successful independent designer in diaspora. The talk explores ideas on self-teaching, exploration of different media or techniques or aesthetics, following one’s passions, and engagement with one’s community and issues of social justice. Naji’s candid and humble retelling of his visions on the way and what he designs can be summed by his curiosity to learn in order to serve the requirements of a creative project keeping freestyle and hand-drawn arabic lettering as core element. Naji elaborates on these ideas through anecdotes and talking about specific projects that have left a mark on his life and career such as Typographic Matchmaking in the City, a design research project initiated and curated by the Khatt Foundation.

For more information:https://najielmir.com/

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afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity. Read more about us on afikra.com