Waw is a bilingual, biannual journal about critical writings on graphic design through politics, philosophy, economy and culture. It searches for graphic design in these 4 different fields and digs its second layer and shows how it could be impactful. Through waw, i wanted to show how design can be political and found around us, how could it affect us as humans and societies. It is a journal for those who don’t know what graphic design is and are interested in the four other fields, or vis versa. Its purpose is to bridge the gap between design and other fields and find their point of intersection. 

Graphic design is a field that is not given enough importance in the region. If someone asks me what do i do, 90% of the time i receive a poker face when I say graphic design. A few years back, during Beirut design week, it was during the time I entered design school, the main question of the event was: Is design a need? and this question resonated for a while. Some said yes and argued, and others said no and argued as well. There was no static answer. Reaching my 4th year in design school, i was asking myself how far could graphic design go? How impactful could it be? I was interested in discovering another layer of graphic design, a deeper layer, of that field i’ve been studying for the past 4 years and that has become a part of the rest of my life. Stemming from my interest in philosophy and politics and basically what shapes us as humans and what’s happening around us, i decided to search for graphic design there and see how these interact together, and affect each other. I was interested in looking at graphic design in a critical way and not only if it’s aesthetically pleasing or not. What does it mean to design a flag? What does it mean to brand a country? Especially in the Middle East. Yes, just like some might argue, design might not be a need, but i wanted to see, and show how graphic design is in fact, found everywhere around us and could affect us without being aware. I wanted to discover another layer to the image, see how far could an image go and be impactful... and that’s how waw journal was created.

Waw is an Arabic letter that has many meanings and functions, one of which is “waw el aatef”, the letter that brings 2 entities together and sometimes form a third meaning, or reality. It is a letter that merges two things together and form a certain intersection. It opens a wide discussion of what graphic design is when found and merged with another entity. Waw is the bridge, or the structure that holds them together. It also serves as a way of parallelism between ideas and how graphic design is perceived in different parts of the world.

The first issue of WAW is about identity, and portrays this notion and its importance in the world of graphic design. What is it to be from a certain culture? How do people identify themselves? How do elements become symbols? And what is the function of design in that case?  In that issue, WAW widens the definition of identity and tries to explore the elements that define us, and raises questions like: why are we like this? A sort of a conversation between hidden identities and apparent ones; nations in search of identities and nations who think they already found it. The journal portrays the role of graphic design in the notion of identity

Waw is political and has a stance. It has a rhetoric tone, a certain irony. I created waw with a voice and something to say, something to stand for.

I wanted WAW to be a personal exhibition for the reader, a space where they can raise questions; to dialogue with the visuals and come up with their very own conclusions; a merge of what they think, what is written and what they're seeing.

The whole journal is written in one size for each language. From titles to pagination to captions, everything is in one size. The differentiation would be in changing typefaces and weights. I chose this one size fits all idea as emphasis on reading the content and give more importance to it. The articles are heavy and are for the reader to go through; they are as important as looking at the graphics and visuals produced

Based on the choice of the letter waw as a name, i wanted to emphasize the interaction of two entities. I chose to draw a stencil WAW as a masthead, to be cut on the cover and interact between the two images chosen.

Dimensions: 240x320 mm - closed