Nahdet El Mahrousa ‘NM’, meaning the ‘Renaissance of Egypt’, is an NPO/NGO that is based in downtown Cairo since 2003. NM's vision is to incubate and build the capacities of young organizations to improve and expand their social impact. They approached me to help uplift and modernize their current logo and to create a visual identity for their brand.
NM's team was too attached to their current logo with the stamp ink plot design which had technical and legibility issues, in addition to its classical look. After a couple of rejected attempts to refine the stamp, I decided to remove it and use the English title of NM and slogan to create a stampy effect around the Arabic calligraphy, which was essential to the design. In addition, the Arabic calligraphy was refined and enlarged, and a new English typeface was carfully picked to better match with the hand-written qualities of the Arabic calligraphy wordmark. Initially, the latter concept got rejected as well, but with the proposed applications the client finally showed signs of acceptance.
