karagkiozis shadow theater
"Karagiozis" consist my dissertation for the TEI of Athens (BA Graphic Design).
Great thanks to my tutor, Kanella Arapoglou for supervising the development of the project.
Karagiozis is the greek shadow theater. The concept was to give a personal id
to a theater like this. Karagoz, Karagioz and Karagous was the shadow play in countries
such as Turkey, Tunisia, the Libyan sea, palestine, Syria and Algeria. Each country
had its own style of play and designing its puppets. The prevailing theories claim
that shadow theater came to Greece via Turkey.
For the logo i needed an element that defines Karagiozis from other shadow theaters,
and i found "sousta", a patent that Greek puppeteers invented to turn the puppet over
in order to be seen both by two sides.
Greek puppeteers created by their own the eaves and signs for their theater by using
handmade typography with decorative elements in order to publicize their plays.
I followed this technique to give an identity that has references to tradition.
Blue and red elements are combined as a conceptual reference of Greece and Turkey.
The fact that every shadow theater creates its own puppets with its unique style
but with respect to the characteristics of each figure, gave me the right to create my own figures.
I borrowed the style of the Mameluke puppets of Egypt (the ancestor of Karagoz)
that uses lots of decorative elements and patterns included between lines.
Also I kept the Arabic style of drawing that defied the proportions of the human body
and defied flamboyantly the rules of perspective.
The longtime research that I made before start designing was written down and two books were created. The first one is a research effort to find the logic series that shadow theater followed through time from its birth until we get our own Karagiozis and the second is a presentation of the most important figures of Karagiozis from 1850 till 1940.
