2009       
Cairo, EG

Adobe Photoshop + Illustrator + Indesign

Catalogue design for the 2009 edition of the YATF (Young Arab Theater Fund) Informal Meeting, held in Alexandria, Egypt. Conceived as both a practical conference document and a conceptual artifact, the catalogue sought to reflect the ethos of the meeting itself: informal, process-oriented, and grounded in accessibility rather than institutional polish.

A defining element of the catalogue is a series of custom portraits created for all conference participants. The available source material consisted of headshots submitted in widely varying lighting conditions, resolutions, and image qualities, many of which were unsuitable for direct reproduction or consistent layout. Rather than attempting to normalize these images through retouching or correction, a different representational approach was developed altogether. This led to the creation of impressionistic graphic portraits that abstracted the original photographs while preserving recognizable individual features. Each portrait was treated as a distinct image, allowing for variation in expression and texture, yet all were produced using the same digital tools and constrained to a stark black-and-white palette. This approach transformed a technical limitation into a visual system, resulting in a coherent series that emphasized collectivity without erasing individuality.

Material choices played a central role in shaping the catalogue’s character. The publication was designed and printed entirely in black and white, using a single paper stock throughout, including the cover. This deliberate reduction of materials and finishes reinforced the informal nature of the meeting and resisted the conventions of glossy conference publications. Instead, the catalogue presents itself as a modest, utilitarian object, foregrounding content and concept over production value. Its material simplicity positions it as something that could be easily reproduced, photocopied, and staple-bound by virtually anyone, aligning the physical form of the catalogue with the meeting’s emphasis on openness, exchange, and accessibility.

Further extending the conceptual framework, photographed, true-to-scale hands appear on both the cover and inside cover, placed precisely where a reader’s hands would naturally rest when holding the catalogue open. These images operate as subtle performance cues, quietly choreographing the reader’s interaction with the object. By guiding how the catalogue is held and read, the hands introduce a performative layer to the act of reading itself. Conceptually, this gesture echoes the performative dimension embedded in the word “Theatre” within the organization’s name, Young Arab Theater Fund, suggesting that performance is not limited to the stage but can also exist in everyday gestures, objects, and modes of engagement.