Sporadic Schooling Launch – A Long-term Design project in Cairo (Canceled)
Egypt
March 12, 2020 till March 14, 2020
Experimental Type Design workshop
Sporadic Schooling is a 12 to 18 months program of workshops, exhibitions, talks and public discussions that focus on visual culture. It’s flexible, nomadic and always sporadic!
Sporadic Schooling is a pedagogical tool focuses on developing new models of knowledge production and sharing by inviting top practitioners in the fields of design, critical theory and museum practice to develop open formats informed by their experiences and perspectives. Although the word ‘schooling’ is used in our title, this project is not about top down education or learning. It is about finding a form to communally explore pertinent exciting and very precise topics and themes with highly qualified protagonists. It is a chance to build a network and a community and to activate it in the public space.
The program is currently Cairo-based and is expected to organically grow and change with time and experience.
The first event of this long-term projects is workshop titled “Experimental Type Design” with Florian Jakober (CH) & Najla Badran (EG)
About the workshop:
In this 3-day workshop, participants look at the components and anatomy of type – both Arabic and Latin – and work with shape, rhythm, impressions and associations (both cultural and visual) to create a bilingual alphabet. The workshop mixes analog and digital experimentation and techniques.
Participation fee: 500 LE
Workshop capacity: 12 participants. Participants need to have a basic design background but not necessary a background in type design. Participants should prepare a few analog tools; paper, pens, scissors, etc. as well as their laptops.
To apply for this workshop, please send an email with a short biography, a few examples of your work (or a link to an online profile) to: mail@engyaly.com by 05.03.2020.
This workshop is a collaboration between Sporadic Schooling and Cairopolitan with the support of Pro Helvetia Cairo, Swiss Arts Council.
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Studio Afrika:
Afrika is Swiss design studio founded by Florian Jakober and Michael Zehnder.
Afrika’s clients are artists, designers, curators, publishers, musicians, entrepreneurs and scientists and many of them are long time collaborators. Design approaches and cooperation therefore often thrive and evolve over several years of continued partnership. Afrika are design engineers; both analogue production processes and software driven procedures define their methodology. Science and history form the foundation that builds their practice, fusing existing concepts and technologies with novel ideas and approaches. After studying Visual Communication together at the Zurich University of the Arts, Afrika gained valuable work experience at international design studios in England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark.
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Najla Badran is a typeface designer, typographer and graphic designer. Born in Egypt, she holds a BA in Graphic Design from the German University in Cairo (2012) and an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, UK (2014). Najla taught typeface design, typography and interaction design at the German University in Cairo (2016 – 2017). And is currently teaching Type at the American University in Cairo (2017 – present). Najla is pursuing her PhD in “Diacritics in the Arabic Scripts and Typography” from the University of Reading, UK (2017 – present).
