USEK students tackle the parliamentary extension creatively

First let me begin by saying that this an academic exercise, which by no means reflects the university politics or is endorsed by the brands in question. After Stoli made a punch to the self-extended parliament my brief was for my students to choose a brand and also tackle the same event creatively. Honestly, I was spoiled rotten! The below result is posted in random order for an execrise that was done under strict internet-less conditions (meaning, any a resemblance with anything currently floating online is a simple coincidence).

Elio Mechleb

Elio Mechleb chose "Nike" which - when pronounced in Arabic means "to screw someone" - this mandate extension is the biggest "Nike". There, sealed and delivered!

Elie Aoun

Eie Aoun chose Cafe Najjar, "slowly slowly on the backburner" we load our politicians and have to carry them till 2017.

Joseph Abboud

Joseph Abboud capitalized on a long lasting battery and a famous slogan already "what's your battery? Re-O-Vac" (Chou bettariyetkon?). We should have chosen a disposible brand!

Lexie Daoud

Lexie Daoud strikes a double punch! First with Fiordelli "sar badna ta2m jdid" - we need a new "outfit" (which doubles as new people and new suit!). And then she was on a roll and did Yokohama tires:

Lexie Daoud

"Da3et el tasse" (the wheel cover/compass has been lost).

Rana Ayoub

Rana Ayoub calls for the parliament members to give themselves - and us - a break... Have a break Have a KitKat.

Tannourine

Lea Saliba pictures our speaker of the parliament drinking and therefore stopping to talk for "a moment of silence" to mourn a democracy that remained at the "demo" level.

Exotica

Ghenwa Abou Fayad takes Exotica for a field trip with "a rose only blossoms... once!".

Once more, this is not a reflection of the USEK politics or the brands' stance on what is going on, but I am very proud we have students who will work in the ad industry capable of creating the concept and the copy for this in 75 minutes or less!

Helvetic Zebra: the stripes that earned Station (even more) stars!

Photo credit: George Zouein and Nabil Canaan

For me to speak of a show at Station Beirut is in itself biased, I was already full of awe for the Maripol opening bash and also covered Leila Alaoui's exhibition about the Syrian refugees with words of praise. In addition, In Medias Res, a show I was heavily involved in happened at the premises there. Still, I will start this post with a Mea Culpa considering I am speaking of a show which is currently ending, and I have only myself to blame for not having attended earlier. So these words will be considered "for posterity" much more than an enticement to go see "Helvetic Zebra".

Perhaps the positive angle of viewing the exhibition so late, is that by now - all the surrounding events have finished - which gives the remaining elements a different perspective than if there was a lot of brouhaha surrounding them.

To the untrained eye, the exhibition's understatement can be confused for shallowness, its restrained face for lack of ambition, and its sporadic visualization as creative overreaching for the topic at hand. However, the works are loaded with meaning, their poise full of zen and balance, and the scenography makes them synergistic without tiptoeing around each other's feet.

The works certainly differ in sizes, from a full wall to a decomposing structure made of a trash bag. Some of them technically challenging while others rely on the lowest technology possible. The "helvetic" angle is thankfully extended conceptually to notions which are not immediately obvious, making the pieces challenging to trace back to the original rationale they came from thus rendering them more layered and worthy of exploration. Considering that the space was occupied previously by the In Medias Res team, it is refreshing to see how it could be - without any change to the architecture - be converted differently and just as efficiently by someone else.

I could spend paragraphs detailing the works, which alas, at this time it's too late to comment upon, but I am not sure the sight of Dunja Herzog's trash can with a small chair on it is not easily forgettable, or the monochromatic screenprints by Philippe Decrauzat which lie in the realm of trompe l'oeil and that linger in the mind long after they were last seen, or the overall work by curator Donatella Bernardi making this exhibition a coherent whole (alongside her own included artwork - a gigantic wall which pays tribute to Bridget Riley's op art). Helvetic Zebra, though the language of typography and polyglot notions that Lebanon shares with Switzerland, managed to combine the unfeasible - bringing a common language to the divided land which exported the alphabet in the first place.

With this show, Station, once more, earns its stars with the zebra stripes.

Stolichnaya takes a punch at the parliament!

Research credit: G.M.

Our parliament has extended its own manadate! There, the members declared themselves so irrepleacable that we must endure more of their useless tenure until 2017. Stolichnaya Vodka decided to give them a piece of her mind - "hangovers" don't last this long.... Or to quote Trident gum "the flavor you can't get rid of"!

Is Lebanese currency designed after the 25 Guilders note?

I have recently come across a very interesting theory: Lebanese current design was influenced by the 25 Dutch Guilders note (pay attention that Guilders have been discontinued in favor of Euros). The design above dates back from 1989 - Guilders by the way were notorious for their exceptional design. At first I dismissed the idea as being something not very worthy of attention - problem is - the more I looked at the current Lebanese notes the more I saw the similarity in terms of design. Considering that the 5,000 was released in 1999, the 10,000 and 50,000 respectively in 2000, 2001 this means that there could be grounds of inspiration in that case.

I do not have any "references" on the theory apart from banknote enthusiasts in Europe who pointed me out the this. But now that I look at it, I honestly find it logical that the 25 Guilders note, with its "windows", geometrical pattern, and overall deisgn grid could have easily been the basis of the whole series we are using nowadays.

Exotica as part of our collective memory

I am part of the generation that remembers Exotica, not as a florist, not as a wedding supplier, not as a landscaper, not as an advertiser, but more as a part our collective memory. I am talking of a different Exotica naturally, specifically an image frozen in time, the one above.

Which lead me to the one below taken from the packshot of the ad in question.

Exotica - part of the art series "Lebanon's History Book" by Tarek Chemaly

Exotica "plante la joie" and yes, there was even an equivalent in Arabic "tazra3 a sa3ada".... It was in the middle of war, and that ad, with that woman in a moulant dress, with no face, but with sensuality to make every television screen explode would come to us, planting joy (as the slogan says) in dire times.

For those of you who want to see the full film for the first time, or remember it from days gone by, here it is for your pleasure!

What a million could buy you at H and M

I was first introduced to H&M when it was still Hannes and Mauritz, I was in Stockholm and room service was late with the laundry so I needed something fast to get on with the day - and upon the suggestion of a Swedish friend I landed there. Even till now, H&M prides itself at giving very cost-efficient fashion, This is the 10th year H&M is doing collaborations (the press would never admit it but some of them were more successful than others - here's how Versace looked like, Marni, and sadly this is the marketing analysis of the missed opportunity that Margiela was).

Interestingly, H&M gets influenced heavily by the designers they collaborate with - in parallel to last year's Isabel Marant capsule collection, they launched their own Navajo prints and marl scarvess, Versace saw them doing a lot of baroque prints for their own collections, dresses similar to glittery Marni made its way to the official collection and so on and so forth. So it's really not a surprise that, with Alexander Wang (now at at the creative helm of his own brand and that of Balanciaga) being the guest designer - we see knock offs of his work galore in this year's H&M collections.

What is very surprising however at how high the price points are for the Wang collaboration, at such prices one can buy T by Alexander Wang items or even mainline items during sales. How high the price? The jacket above costs 999,000 LBP (OK that's 1,000 LBP less than the million the title of this post suggested) or 666 USD. It is described as "Down jacket in windproof, reflective functional fabric with a detachable, padded hood with a magnetic fastener, a taped zip at the front, side pockets with a taped, concealed zip, ventilating mesh sections with a zip under the arms, and ribbed cuffs. Lined. Filling 90% down, 10% feathers."

In other places however, it was reported (about that same jacket): "Models wearing the new line were milling around and posing for photos. Hanne Gaby Odiele, a Belgian model who lives in New York City, was sporting an incredibly puffy and shiny silver parka. “This jacket is heaven,” she said. “Inside, it’s like you’re surrounded by a cloud. It’s really warm.”"

So basically, you are paying AT H&M 666 USD for a "cloud". I hope, unlike the iCloud, there is no leakage there.

Under other circumstances, a million could get you the whole bargain area when steep discounts are offered. 

The Beirut Book by David Hury launches tonight

Credit: David Hury

"The Beirut Book"" by David Hury on Tamyras editions is launching today. Started as scribblings on his stand during last year's edition of Salon du Livre Francophone, it was a bit of a Hyde Park about the city. My own contribution is the one you see above.... NTSC (Never Twice Same City). Interestingly, the blog's name is now more Tarek Chemaly rather than Beirut/NTSC but the acronym takes a life of its own.

Basics of PNG File Format with libPNG example

PNG (Portable Network Graphic) is well known image format used widely over internet. PNG is lossless compressed image file format due to which it is the most favorable file format of images which are likely to be transferred over network. A PNG file consists of PNG Header + Multiple PNG Chunks. A simple PNG file consist of following structure

PNG Header + IHDR Chunk + IDAT Chunk + IEND Chunk

Where

PNG Header:

Offset	Hex Value	ASCII
0	89
1	50	P
2	4E	N
3	47	G
4	0D
5	0A
6	1A
7	0A

Example:
89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A

PNG Chunk : Structure of chunk is shown below. A single PNG file can contains multiple chunks of different type. Type is identified using Chunk Type field. Each type of field has its own interpretation.

• Data Length (4 byte)
• Chunk Type (4 byte ASCII name)
• Data Bytes
• CRC (4 byte)

IHDR Chunk: Length of IHDR is fixed 13 bytes and its data field consists of
Image Width (4 byte)
Image Height (4 byte)
Color Depth (1 byte)
Color Type  (1 byte)
Compression method (1 byte),
Filter method (1 Byte)
Interlace method (1 byte).

Example:
00 00 00 0D 49 48 44 52 00 00 01 F4 00 00 00 64 08 06 00 00 00 70 C7 C2 7D

IDAT: This chunk contains the compressed image pixel data. A PNG file can have multiple IDAT chunks which will allows the renderer application (like web browser) to display part of image as when the chunk will be available and loading remaining image at the same time.

IEND: This chunks indicates the that are no more chunks. It contains 0 bytes data . It always comes at the END of PNG file. Hex output of
00 00 00 00 49 45 4e 44 ae 42 60 82

Summary related to other common types of chunk is available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG-Chunks.html
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/book/chapter11.html

libPNG is open source library used to decode and encode PNG files. A very good example on how to create a PNG image is available at http://www.labbookpages.co.uk/software/imgProc/libPNG.html but this example creates PNG file on disk what if we want to write PNG into buffer?
To achieve that we can use png_set_write_fn as mention on this post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1821806/how-to-encode-png-to-buffer-using-libpng

Almaza STEALS Nissan Micra ad.

Almaza has stolen the Nissan Micra ad, the concept and idea and even execution are the same. "Wanted" means both "in the security sense" but also "popular with consumers". Nissan did it way before, Almaza is nothing but a thief. Exhibit A above. I rest my case.

Undressed: Society's reflection in its brands

Johnnie Stalker - Boo

Smack Daniels - Boo

Anti-consumerist discourse is not exactly very popular in Lebanon, heck - even the blogosphere is full of people sucking up to brands to endorse them and be their spokespeople (for free, they never "make a dime off their blogs" of course!). Anyhow, it is interesting to see suddenly a whole new anti-brand manifesto by an artist who dubs himself as Boo... I don't think I am in a liberty to reveal his identity (even if I am sure it will be out during the exhibition and that it is common knowledge among a certain circle fo people). His works, in ballpoint on paper have witty names such as "Johnnie Stalker" or "Smack Daniels" or "But Wiser". Somewhere between a conscious consumer and a disillusioned advertiser, Boo takes a step back from the ginding mill to assess where he stands vis a vis the society he lives in, and what space do brands take in it.

Undressed will take place at the ArtLab Gemmayze and is scheduled to open on November 6th and runs till November 29th.

By not replying, Crepaway replies to Shawarmanji

Crepaway - having been just spoofed by Shawarmanji - was too busy to reply. The alibi can hold in court any day of the week - they were busy carving burgers (the rest of us don't carve them, we crave them).

PS - dear Crepaway, even if you had invited me to sample your new menu, I wouldn't have come (not that you invited me I am not hip enough!), as a diabetic, your food is something I can no longer eat.

Shawarmanji dipped in competitors' sauce for Halloween

Masterstroke from Shawarmanji - for this Halloween it goes trick or treating dressed as Crepaway, Classic Burger Joint, Kababji and Roadster! Basically its archrival competitors (meaning the their logo has been morphed to look like them this holloween)... Nightmare on Elm street anyone? 

Bellboys are not just for hotels: Gandour gets a new logo.

Image source

And the saga continues, during the last 18 months so many Lebanese institutions have rebranded, Crepaway changed its selling line, whereas Matta, Boubouffe, LBC, Enoteca, Credit Bank, Debbane, and Malak el Tawouk all changed their logos. Now comes the turn of Gandour.

My immediate first impression was that, had the Starbucks mermaid and Wendy been a lesbian couple, this would be their love child. The logo is quite fine graphically, could work on different backgrounds, retains some elements from the Gandour evolution (the banner, the bellboy to whom two of the previous logos alluded to but never graphically shown clearly) and is being sold as: "The key objective was to create a new iconic brand marque for Gandour, capturing the essence of the company in a simple, yet modern way. The new brand marque needed to present Gandour as a contemporary company but without alienating existing customers and stake holders" - which is a bit confusing considering bellboys allude more to the retro eras and glitzy in-between the two great wars decades (somewhere between Charleston follies and trente glorieuses) much more than "contemporary company". Still visually the logo works (apart from the mouth expression - is he happy, surprised, or what?)

Now the bad news?

What Gandour needs more than anything else is a coherent communication strategy which is completely inconsistent (after rolling a beautiful TV Unica ad, and a lovely Tarboush campaign, we ended with two horrible Dabke and Unica billboards!). Their visual presence is a hit or a miss, so I am not sure getting a new logo was the top prority.

CML gets itself a Bourjeily treatment

CML (Caisse Mutuelle Laique) which defines itself as a mutual and social protection body with the mission to offer healthcare services to its members, released one very nicely concepted TV commerial. It's witty without being overdone, funny without sinking to slapstick, and gets its point across without dumbing down its viewer. How cool is that? Through the grapevine, I knew that the person who wrote and directed it is none other than Lucien Bourjeily (whereas to the large public he has shot to superstardom through the March - M and C Saatchi Beirut Marathon stunt, a different audience knows him as a pioneer of improvised theatre in Lebanon) and it seems that even the production company involved Film Production is a company Lucien is a partner in (so that brings it full circle!). Considering how everything appears stiff, badly (or over) acted, totally scripted and unreal in TV ads these days, it is a refresher that CML managed to get away from the crowd and still inflused some freshness with this ad.

On Migration, UK has nothing against inferior species!

I am staying in Poland, come on over!

I admire HMA (her majesty's ambassador) to Lebanon Tom Fletcher, or rather - I admire Tom Fletcher from a different angle some other bloggers admire him. I admire him because he knew how to work the social media scene, how to whitewash history, how to dictate the views he wishes communicated in the digital sphere. And he knew that this was indeed the "caste" (yes, I am referring to the Indian stratification which the British has supported as colonialists) he needed to adress to come across as a super diplomat (which he actually is since he spins his stories so well).

Last we heard of him he was switching roles with his house help. All of this is fine and dandy, he was raising awareness to the problems of domestic and migrant workers in Lebanon and supporting human rights.

So can anyone explain to me how come the UK official position wants to ban movement of citizens fromt he EU to its soil specifically aiming to put an arbitrary cap on those coming from Eastern Europe?

It's either/or gentlemen!

Or perhaps Mr. Fletcher is attempting to see if human rights work, and if they do, get them back across tot he UK now that the experiment succeeded.

The ad that goes wrong: self depreciation is an art.

I have recently come across a British show called "the play that goes wrong" - where, you guessed it, everything that could go wrong does goes wrong even more than Ziad Rahbani's "chi fechel". But what interested me the most what the ads they ran for the show inticing people to "save money - don't come", "starring Tom Cruise - subject to availability", "premium seats - only £3,950" or a strapline that went that the play was "starring no one famous", there was even logos of the "tony" "olivier" awards and underneath "they liked the show". Ads have appeared upside down in newspapers to emphasize that even the marketing was amateurish.

Self-depreciation in advertising is an art all by itself, few can master it as it takes real courage to talk one's self down as most audiences don't get the joke. Among global brands, we have Stella Artois with their "reassuringly expensive" line, whereas this could be seen as not-really-self-depreciation on many levels it is, take this example and appreciate the irony:

Moving on to Skoda, previously one of the most derided brands there even was - when a British magazine ran a test on bras, the one that scored the least was called "this is the skoda of bras". Another joke went "why does Skoda have rear heating windows? so that you hands won't freeze when you push it". And on it went, and so when Skoda did their incredible brand turn around they capitalized on their own jokes. "Skoda, no really, Skoda" or "It's a Skoda. Which, for some, is still a problem." or "It's a Skoda. Honest."

I am not sure anyone needs to be reminded of the Diesel "be stupid" campaign. If self-depreciation was taken to new levels, then this was it. My favorite is this one, "smart critiques, stupid creates" - simply because I am on both sides of the fence - not only do I do critique on this blog, but I too go reckless in my projects and artworks. Without further delay, here it is:

But the crown undeniably goes to "Hans Brinker Budget Hotel" in Amsterdam. The place has made such a mockery of itself, but all in the most positive of ways. Its ads are now classic, and keep topping themselves in terms of self-derision. I am lost as to which ones to post but here are some of the wittiest:

Naturally, for us Lebanese, most of these are no jokes but daily occurences. Still, I'd love to see a Lebanese client mock itself this way. It could be tough for their ego, and the audience might not sympathize, but - perhaps this could be "real advertising" such as "3G breaks repeatedly" "customer service at our branches now sucks even more", "longer queues because we have grown more incompetent". Hmmm, it's not irony, is it?

Redrock thinks outside of the unipole

So much for thinking outside the box, now is the time to think outside of the unipole. Lowe Pimo did a beautiful job illustrating the concept of "eco village" for Redrock (from Sayfco). Yes, that's a flock of birds you see protruding from the unipole (don't start shooting as a typical Lebanese please!). Whereas we have seen a lot of elements protrude from unipoles in the past it was mostly top of bottles or hairs of singers, so it's refreshing that such a concept could be executed.

What Liz Sarkisian can teach Amal Clooney

And so it happened, the honeymoon is over. I mean literally. A woman goes to a honeymoon, her husband leaves early to start working again, and she goes back to her career and travels to Athens alone. Sounds bleak doesn't it?

Well, let's put things in perspective a bit.

Star couple Amal Alamuddin and husband George Clooney had a super wedding followed by a lavish honeyomoon, the husband travelled to the US to plug his recent blocbuster release, and she herself is currently advising the Greek government as to the return of the Elgin marbles which are being held in the UK.

Nothing to see here folks, keep driving.

But today's news was huge in its own right. Amal Alamuddin in a move that actually took down the website of her employer due to immense traffic actually changed her name (in the few seconds that the website was actually up) to "Amal Clooney".

There, I can already hear the accusations: she failed all feminist principles, she took his name to ride his coattails because of her post-wedding fledging career, she has become the epitome of submissiveness to male patriarchy, oh and she wore a moulant white dress with gigantic retro sunglasses on her first day of work (I had to put this in).

Now, before we go too harsh on Amal, here's a precedent:

Liz Sarkisian!

The Lebanese actress, when trying to launch a career in Egypt, dubbed herself as "Eman". Try as she might to actually get the name hold, everyone - apart from movie posters - kept calling her Liz Sarkissian (someone even joked she should just say "Eman, formerly Liz Sarkissian" - in Arabic it's funnier "Eman, Liz Sarkissian sabikan").

So, whatever Mrs. Clooney wishes to be called officially, she is joining the trend of Beyonce touring as Mrs. Carter, or one Kim Kardashian (not sure if you ever heard of her) getting a new passport under the name of Kim West (it turns out she was married to a guy from that family you know).

Bottom line:

Amal Clooney, Alamuddin sabikan.

Clementine makes Noise with Adha

 

Clementine and sister PR company Noise have come up with brilliant Eid el Adha cards. They both focus on the theme of "sheep" due to the ethymology of the Eid being corelated with the animal, and in two different interpretations (one capitalizes on the dot on the "i" in the noise logo, the other transforms the sheep into a Clementine). The headline of the Clementine card even pushes it further by declaring "adha el eid moubarakan" which double plays on "adha" both as the name of the festivity but also as "the eid has become blessed" (since adha as a verb means "has become"). Color me impressed.

Eid greetings from Arab Museum of Modern Art

A splendid card from the Arab Museum of Modern Art, with a wonderful work entitled "Al Ka'aba" by Egyptian artist Omar el-Nagdi. And with this, best wishes from myself for a Eid Moubarak.

Les Angles by Hala Moubarak on 7UPstairs Publishing

7UPstairs Publishing is delighted to share with you Hala Moubarak's first book outing (eventhough she has been published widely previously in print and online this is her first "book" format) concentrating on her trained architectural eye which sees edifices "with angles" (hence the title "les angles"). Hala's Instagram account (from which these works were taken) can be found here.

Shellshock Test

Here is the one line of code to check if your bash is vulnerable to shellshock bug or not. Just copy and run the command on the shell prompt and if it shows "Yes vulnerable" then patch your bash

env x='() { :;}; echo Yes vulnerable' bash -c "echo Test complete"

This is a test script so it just have echo statement but in real attack this vulnerability can be use to exploit almost anything. Many bots around the globe has already started exploiting this vulnerability. The worst part is that no one can come up with the list of program which uses bash internally.

MSN is back. Seriously.

MSN from the Tanaklogia series by Tarek Chemaly

MSN is back. No, seriously,MSN is back. You know that retro vibe sweeping over everything from fashion to tech-styling (heck, there's even an arcade stand for the iPad called iCade and cassette iPhone cases), vintage clothing has never been more "in" (old school Versace and classic Pucci to name but two), and recup' is all the rage in interior decoration... Hence, MSN is back.

Who knows, the next Microsoft product might just be a newly revamped geocities complete with guestbooks!  

Revealed: Amal Alamuddin is Wonder Woman.

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

So now it's been revealed: Amal Alamuddin is the real Wonder Woman. Hollywood casting agents take note (and Mr. Clooney AKA Mr. Amal Alamuddin should get her signed to some top notch agent). This woman - like in the Percy Sledge song - "can do no wrong". Brains: check, education: check, style: check, and the list goes on. Actually, even her father - a retired University of Beirut professor - said that her marriage is good for the Middle East which basically gives the extravagnza geopolitical weight. Apart from the "politics" of it, the social implications are huge: Finally, a Middle Eastern woman (fine, she just lived in Lebanon for 2 years before being whisked away to London but bear with me), who is liberated, doesn't fit a stereotype or mould, is actually a Druze (but for some reason that seems fine with international media), has opinions which otherwise seem not-too-politcally correct by the US standards (she is overtly anti-Israel), did not resort to plastic surgery, and - to sum it up - is anti-everything Arab women has been portrayed as for a long time... basically, either "veiled-to-burqa-wearing-entities-succumbing-to-patriarchal-authority-and-confined-to-household-premises" or "manufactured-sex-doll".

Then comes Amal Alamuddin. There you have it, Wonder Woman she is.

The #papercardubai by Saatchi & Saatchi and the RTA

Now that's an interesting coup from Saatchi and Saatchi Dubai and the Roads and Transport Authority in that Emirate in conjuction with the Government of Dubai, whereby a replica of a 4x4 car done in reinforced cardboard was put in the Dubai Mall indicating that, at 100 kms/hours practically your car is as strong as this, and inviting people to sign the car because every "signature will help stop reckless speeding." Interestingly, the campaign got 10,000 signatures on the car in 2 days. With the hope that the drivers do take their "pledge" seriously, at least it's a worthwhile way of expressing the idea.