Villa Fairouz
Logo design
Research and design during employment at Kite Creative
Creative director: Maya Saikali
Beirut, Lebanon
2010
Beirut, Lebanon
2010
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Research findings
It is important to note that there were two stories that were happening in parallel. One was Fairouz's musical career, and the other was Beirut's burgeoning reputation as a cultural melting pot after it gained its independence from the French colony. The key themes in these two threads culminated in the Fairouz-Rahbani collaboration. Below is a diagram that summarizes the six main events and demonstrates how they fall into three diametrically opposed themes:
Design concept
Moodboard: To pin down the visual forms that would steer the logo sketches, I put together a moodboard that consisted of examples of Arabic typography on the posters and vinyl sleeves of Fairouz's music and plays as well as the signage in Beirut, which was becoming increasingly urbanized.
Logo: The logo sums up all the important themes that came out of the research. The gaiety and simplicity of rural village life is represented by the geometric forms that are akin to folkloric art and expression. The bold strokes are similar to those found in the lettering of the 1960s vinyl covers and posters of Fairouz’s music and plays, while the stroke contrast maintains a calligraphic feel that is at once Arabic and contemporary. The logo's forms are also reminiscent of music notation and the repetition of the first two letters in each word creates rhythm.
The logo is applied in a way that makes it a placeholder for the historical context. It is less about the visibility of the words "Villa Fairouz," and more about juxtaposing two contrasting themes from the six themes shown in the diagram above. The type of juxtaposition is also variable: the placeholder logo can be centred on the background, or enlarged and cropped, or multiplied to create a pattern.
