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