Title

City Branding: Creating a Flexible Identity System for the City of Cairo

Student Status

Undergraduate

Abstract

This project is about creating an energetic, forward thinking brand for the city of Cairo. The purpose behind it is to use branding as a tool for both promoting civic engagement and also enhancing and increasing communication channels between the city and its people. Because of the city’s dynamic and fast paced nature, the design moved away from the idea of logo-centric branding towards the creation of a ‘flexible identity system’ for the city. To create this system, the project focused on visually analyzing some of the symbols that exist within the city and creating visual shortcuts in the form of icons. These icons are then combined to form 6 different logos for different sectors that exist within the city; the cultural, the historical, the contemporary, the transportation- al, the touristic, and the commercial. The al-Qahera brand has also been designed as an open flexible identity system which means that new shapes, symbols, shortcuts, and categories can be created according to the city’s needs so that the brand can continue to grow with the city. The next stage of the project involves implementation in order to display how the al-Qahera brand can be integrated with the city, and how the city can promote itself and engage its citizens using its newly created, dynamic brand.

Department

Arts Department

First Advisor

Bahia Shehab

Second Advisor

Ghalia ElSrakbi

Third Advisor

Haytham Nawar

Committee Member 1

Ahmed Ellaithy

Committee Member 2

Ahmad Saqfalhait

Committee Member 3

Ayman Ismail

Extent

p.4

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Not necessary for this item

Comments

This piece of art work is part of the "Interdisciplinarity and Design Third Graduating Class of Graphic Design Students The American University in Cairo – Spring 2018" catalog. Held at the AUC Sharjah Art Gallery on December 21st, 2018, the "ALT w Shidd" exhibition showcased bachelor projects by the third Graduating class of Graphic Design students. This year’s projects were divided into 5 panels according to their tackled themes. The panels included “Digital Design”, “Fashion Design”, “Publication Design”, “Advertising”, and “Retail and Branding”. A team of internal and external jury members were invited to each panel in order to provide ourstudents with critical feedback and evaluate the final outcome of their projects according to conducted research, applied methodologies, and undertaken creative design process. Jury members from within AUC included Ahmed Ellaithy (TTO -Technology Transfer Office) Ahmad Saqfalhait (GRDN), Ayman Ismail (Venture Lab), Brenda Segone (ARTV), Heba Safeyeldine (ARCH), Marwan Fayed (GRDN), May Hasebou (GRDN), Mahamad Khalil (GRDN), and Sherif Samy (GRDN). As for external jurors; they included Amira Aboulmagd (Al-Shorouk Publishing), Majd Elsherif (Matter Branding), Mohab Anis (Innovety), Nigel Fletcher-Jones (AUC Press), Sahar Zoghby (FP7), Samy Elias(Sahara Printing), Sawsan Mourad (El Beit Magazine), and Suzie Graiess (Association for the Protection of the Environment).

Rights

This record describes an artistic or creative work which was prepared as part of a course of study at the American University of Cairo. The creators retain all rights to the original artistic or creative works described herein.

Publication Date

Fall 12-21-2018

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS