Hussein Alazaat in Conversation With Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès

Khatt Chronicles: Stories on Design from the Arab World

Huda AbiFarès interviews Hussein Alazaat about his passion since childhood for Arabic letters, Arab comics, and Arab graphic design. Alazaat discusses his influences: his education through his professional experiences in both Doha and Amman, prior to establishing his multi-functional studio space ElHarf House (elharf.com) where he hosts calligraphy and design workshops, and where his personal archive of rare printed Arabic books, magazines and ephemera are kept, that he named Khazanet El-Kutub el-Jamila / The Beautiful Books Trove (khazanet.org). Alazaat discusses his project Wajha (Wajha.org), a social design initiative he founded with his friend Ali Masri, that offers local shops in Jordan and other Arab countries, free visual identity and hand-painted shopfront signs as means to bring pride and beauty to less well to do neighborhoods. He also discusses his project related to old Jordanian/Arabian scripts and coins, and the importance of connecting old cultural heritage and visual culture of the 70s and 80s to contemporary graphic design.

***** About Khatt Chronicles *****

Khatt Chronicles podcast features remarkable designers, illustrators, and researchers from the Arab World. We host engaging conversations about their practice, vision, and aspirations. In line with the rest of the Khatt foundation projects, focuses on new developments with Arab typography and design. By Arab, we mean people working with the Arabic language, script, and audience, who are not necessarily Arabs. These initiatives are dedicated to the younger generation as an alternative medium. It also focuses on the younger generations of designers to fulfill three primary objectives:

1. Promote designers in the Arab World to the region and the rest of the world.
2. Continue the mission of Khatt foundation as a network between designers to support fostering and exploring new ideas.
3. Present these podcasts for inspiration and educational reasons.

The podcast is an ongoing platform covering design initiatives and developments around the world. Our aim is to identify and highlight designers from the Arab World that have made meaningful contributions in their fields or have demonstrated excellence in design.

Through storytelling, the Khatt Chronicles podcast will get you to know the designers on a personal level, and get to learn about how they think, and what makes them tick.

Khatt Chronicles podcast is in collaboration with afikra.

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***** About afikra *****

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