Directions of Writing: LEFTWARD. RIGHTWARD. DOWNWARD.

Antoine Abi Aad discusses various expressions of writing in a series of conversations with international experts

Still from Directions of Writing, 2021.

In Directions of Writing, Design Professor Antoine Abi Aad chairs a series of conversations on writing with international professionals from the fields of design, typography, calligraphy, graffiti, education, language studies, graphology, and archaeology.

From Hamourabi’s clay tablets to Jobs’ i-tablets, writing has never stopped leaving its mark on humankind. While its origins have always been a subject of debate, it is undeniable that the development and employment of writing have provoked drastic changes in the history of civilisation. Writing, in its various forms of script, made it possible for communities to express danger, facilitate economical counts, spread religions, and express love.

Taking as a starting point the different directions of writing across languages—from left to right, right to left, and top to bottom—the conversations that constitute Directions of Writing seeks to explore the impact of writing forms on broader culture. In so doing, this project covers different aspects of writing (typography, handwriting, calligraphy, graphology on one direction), as well as discusses particularities associated with different languages, including among others Arabic letters, Latin, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Syriac, Cuneiform, and Hieroglyphs.

Confirmed participants include MD, educator and author Beltran Mena, graphic designer, author and curator Felipe Taborda, Ph.D. student in linguistics Iskandar Ding, author, educator and practicing graphic designer Klimis Mastorides, author, educator and book designer Mariko Takagi, author, archaeologist and university researcher Marwan Kilani, creative director, artist and design entrepreneur Omar Kabani, typographer and design educator Onur Yazıcıgil, philologist and archaeologist Patrick M. Michel, typography and font making systems educator Robin Turner, innovation and design advocate, design practitioner and educationist Sam Nii Adjaido, author, graphologist, graphotherapist and educator Saman Aslam, handwriting acquisition, calligrapher and type designer Santosh Kshirsagar, and educator and practicing designer Sophia Shih.

New videos will be released on our website every week.

The views, information, or opinions expressed during in the interviews that make up the Oral History Collection are those of each individual involved and do not represent those of the Foundation for Art and Psychoanalysis.

Beltrán Mena and Santosh Kshirsagar in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 1:16:35 min

Omar Kabani and Robin Turner in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 43:47 min

Mariko Takagi and Marwan Kilani in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 1:09:03 min

Sophia Shih and Felipe Taborda in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 50:27 min

Onur Yazıcıgil and Sam Nii Adjaidoo in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 56:41 min

Saman Aslam and Klimis Mastoridis in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 1:06:53 min

Patrick M. Michel and Iskandar Ding in conversation with Antoine Abi Aad, 2021, HD video, 1:34:11 min

Antoine Abi Aad (Ph.D. and MA University of Tsukuba in Japan, DES Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Lebanon), is a designer, Visiting Associate Professor, Graduate Institute of Design Science, Tatung University, Taiwan. He is also a frequent guest lecturer and has given talks and workshops at numerous institutions, including the Universidade de Brasilia (Brazil), International Design School (Jakarta), Institute of Business and Design (Moscow), Hong Kong Design Institute, IIT Bombay, Greenside Design Center College of Design (Johannesburg), Nara University of Education (Japan), and Yale University (New Haven). Having taught 1,945 students since 2004, Antoine’s true dedication is for research and experimentations. His passion is for letters: typography, calligraphy and handwriting. The different scripts he writes (Arabic, Latin, Japanese, and Chinese) led him to have special interests in the directions of writing, leftward, rightward and downward, and how these directions affect visual communication and advertising, or even more, motion graphics and animation. Antoine was the Chairperson of Typoday Amman 2020, Head of Department of Graphic Design and Visual Communication at the Lebanese University, and he also served as a vice-president of i-cod (formerly Icograda) from 2015 to 2017.

Sam Nii Adjaidoo is an innovation and design advocate with a high intent to see the Afrikan and the youth of this global economy become highly confident in their creative intelligence. Design has always been his life. His parents wished him to pursue medicine but he chose the path to design... good design. As the founder of IDS (A Design School), DreamBrander (An Advertising Agency), and Walter7 & Associates (A Design&Build Firm), his day-to-day life is to use these platforms to make others smile. He holds a Master of Science degree in Strategic Marketing, a BA in Communication Design from KNUST(Ghana), and an exchange diploma certificate in Sustainable Design from Design School Kolding (Denmark). He is currently serving as a board member of The Pan Afrikan Design Institute (PADI); a voice for designers in Afrika. He mostly engages in conferences and projects with international design organizations like ico-D, iF Design Foundation, and Cumulus. His research interest hinges on creative confidence, design leadership, and design thinking in developing economies—mainly using design thinking as a means to change lives and communities.

Saman Aslam was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. She is the first foreign graphologist in the country as well the first female and youngest graphologist of Pakistan. Saman is the only bilingual (English) graphologist in Saudi Arabia. With over 11 years of experience, she has worn many hats including mental health advocate, project manager, assistant coordinator, website developer, product & department manager, event organizer, and educator. Through her innovative and unique approach to graphology research, she ensures that her clients/patients acquire their desired results. Some of her clients are celebrities or corporates, she also specializes in working with the Education sector and HR departments. Saman found her interests in Graphology at a fairly young age and she switched her career to Graphology. Graphology—inference of character, behavior pattern, health ailments, mental & emotional stability, past trauma, and counting from a person’s handwriting and signature.

Iskandar Ding hails from the Hui ethnic minority (known in Central Asia as Dungan) in China. He received his BA in Modern Languages and Linguistics from the University of Oxford and his MA in Iranian Studies from SOAS University of London, where he is currently pursuing a PhD on Yaghnobi linguistics. A proud child of the Silk Road, Iskandar is particularly interested in Iranian languages, pre-Islamic cultures and religions of the Iranian cultural sphere, as well as cultural exchanges between Greater Iran, China, and India.

Omar Kabbani co-founded Ashekman, an Arabic street art collective, in Beirut, Lebanon, alongside his identical twin brother Mohamed in 2001. Born in the midst of the Lebanese civil war in the early 80s, the twins witnessed several wars in three decades that made them organically start a platform. Ashekman soon became an outlet for the twins to fight social injustice and extremism that fuels the false propaganda about the Middle East. In fact, Ashekman’s mission is to revive the Arabic culture in an urban context, to bring back the golden Arab age where poetry, science, and knowledge were exported and translated to all cultures and, finally, to spread a positive message of tolerance. Ashekman style is Arabic Calligraffiti, which is a mixture of classical Arabic calligraphy with modern Arabic graffiti.He is currently based in Dubai, UAE, managing the Ashekman brand and its subsidiaries: T. Durden, Ashekman clothing, and Ashekman graffiti academy.

Marwan Kilani was born in Switzerland in an overly complex family. He grew up in the Italian speaking part of the country, did his undergraduate studies in the French speaking part, and then moved to Oxford for his Masters and PhD. After a few years working as a researcher in Prague, he is now based in Berlin. He fell in love with Egyptian Hieroglyphs around the age of 10, and that passion led him to become an Egyptologist and a linguist. He currently lives and works as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Berlin. His research focuses on the socio-historical dynamics underlying the circulation and exchange of words among various languages of the Ancient Near East. These travelling words fascinate him both because they bear witness to a very early “globalized” world millennia ago, and because some of them travelled not only through space but also through time, being used still today in several languages around the world. This passion was prompted his most recent project: a YouTube channel he created with a friend and colleague to present the travels of some of these words.

Santosh Kshirsagar is a Design Educator and Calligrapher from Mumbai, India. With more than two decades of teaching experience, he is the current Dean at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art. In 2019, he completed his PhD on Handwritting Acquisition in Devanagari script from IDC, IIT Bombay. He teaches Calligraphy (especially in Devanagari script), Typography, and Visual Communication Design. He has conducted several workshops in India and abroad and has given illustrated talks on Indian Calligraphy in Germany, Belgium, London and Japan. His Calligraphic works have been exhibited in Japan with Prof. Mori Kooun, Australia, and the US. He has presented his research papers at ICTVC (Cyprus), ATYPAI (Dublin, Ireland), International Graphonomics Society Conference (Japan). He has also designed Typefaces for Microsoft (Windows XP) in Gujrati & Oriya scripts. He is an academic consultant to government organisations and private institutions in India. He is on the advisory board of Typography Day from 2009. He is one of the Co-Founder of Aksharaya, a non-profit organisation dedicated to creating awareness about Indian scripts.

Klimis Mastoridis is Professor of Typography & Graphic Communication and Dean of the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. He is director of the Institute for the Study of Typography and Visual Communication (ISTVC), director of ‘Hyphen, a typographic forum’, and author of the books Reproduction and printing issues (in Greek / 1988, 1993, 1997, new ed. 2010) and Casting the Greek newspaper: a study of the morphology of the ephemeris from its origins until the introduction of mechanical setting (1999). A Fellow of the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) and of the Institute of Paper, Printing and Publishing (IP3), as well as the initiator and general secretary of the International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC), Klimis has played a leading role in Greek typographic education and research, through writing, publishing an international journal, and organising major conferences.

Beltrán Mena was born in Santiago de Chile in 1959. He received his medical degree and license in 1986 from Universidad Católica de Chile, where he is an Associated professor. Mena participated in medical software development, early telemedical applications on the Internet (1994), and directed the Center for Medical Education for more than 10 years. He was particularly interested in teaching methods, and contributed to the creation of the national examination for clinical doctors. He directed and designed a poetry and travel newspaper called NORESTE, has contributed articles to newspapers and magazines in Chile (collected in a book, El rey de las bolitas), and wrote TUBAB, a novel about traveling in Africa. He has practiced several activities: photography, graphic design, programming. The history of writing and reading have been within his main interests for many years, lecturing on the subject at Universidad Católica de Chile and the Master on Publishing at Diego Portales University.

Patrick M. Michel holds an MA in Classical Archeology and Ancient History from the University of Lausanne. He got his PhD in Assyriology from the University of Geneva. He has done research at the Swiss Institute in Rome and the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and has taught at the universities of Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, and Rome, invited in the USA and in the UK. In 2013, he received the Fellowship of the International University of Venice for the interdisciplinary seminar Between East and West. He currently leads the Collart-Palmyra Project at the University of Lausanne and holds a position of maître d’enseignement et de recherche.

Sophia Shih is currently a professor of the Department of Design at National Taiwan Normal University. She is also Standing committee member of Graphic Design Association of the Republic of China, and the former President of the Association. Sophia served as the Vice President of International Council of Design (ICo-D) during 2011-2013. Sophia delves in the study of visual semiotics, urban design, cultural and creative industries, and brand recognition systems. Her works express her vision of simplicity and universal design with a feminine touch. Actively involved in both national and international exhibitions and events, she is frequently invited as the program manager or as the judge for design contests and projects. She often lectures in many international workshops and seminars. She also serves as curator of many design projects and exhibitions, such as Women’s Eyes, an international exhibition of the Taipei WDC events. She has received numerous national and international awards. And among those award-winning posters, some are collected by museums world-wide. Many of her works have been covered by the media. Her publications include Poster Arts, Duality & Simplicity in the Theory and Research of Poster Design and City Cite-A Semiotic Study of Triadic Relationship in Visual Communication.

Felipe Taborda is a graphic designer, author, and curator from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A graduate of Rio’s Catholic University, he studied cinema and photography at the London International Film School(England), Communication Arts at the New York Institute of Technology and Graphic Design at the School of Visual Arts (USA). He has his own office since 1990, working mainly in the cultural, publishing, and recording fields. In 2008, he launched his book Latin American Graphic Design, the very first comprehensive compilation of historical and contemporary design of this region, published by Taschen. In 2014, St John’s University, in New York, organized the exhibition Another Point of View, an expressive retrospective covering 30 years of his graphic works. He has curated the event Footb-All Mix / 32 Posters for a Passionate Game for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, with exhibitions in several countries around the world. In October 2018, he had two simultaneous retrospective exhibitions: Todo al Revés / The Graphic Work of Felipe Taborda, in Spain, on the occasion of Madrid Gráfica 2018, and Cara a Tapa / The Visual Music of Felipe Taborda, as one of the official exhibitions of the International Poster Biennial of Mexico. Between 2019 and 2020, he was in Europe for six months, at the invitation of universities and institutions. First in Barcelona, Spain, and later in London, England.

Mariko Takagi is a German-Japanese typographer, an author and designer of books, and an educator. She acts as an intermediary between the Western and Japanese cultures in general—and between Latin letters and Japanese/Chinese characters in particular. Mariko Takagi spent six years in Hong Kong (2010–2016), where she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. This move from a Latin letter based environment to a bilingual (Latin letters and Chinese characters) gave her new inspirations and insights to culture, language, and scripts. In 2016, she published the book Kanji Graphy, in which she explores the Japanese writing system in regards of their visual and semantic expressiveness in typography. In April 2017, Takagi moved to Kyoto to continue her work as an Associate Professor and researcher at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto, Japan. Currently she is working on the third volume of the Hanzi/Kanji Graphy series, focusing on the reading of Japanese script.

Robin Turner kick-started his design career, when he enrolled for a national diploma in Graphic Design in 1992. Before teaching, he cut his teeth in the publication and corporate identity industries while working for a small design agency called Haunt House. He started lecturing at the Greenside Design Center in about 1996, and whilst there, started a handful of agencies to help keep himself abreast of the working world. He perused a master’s degree in 2008 and qualified with an MA in Digital Arts through the Witwatersrand University. Currently, Rob is a complete techno-nerd and continues to work and teach in the interactive design field (with a strong interest in Human Computer Interaction). He also has an intense passion for print. As a result, Rob spends much of his free time trying to understand the intricacies of typographic systems, the application of this to interactive environments, and while crafting his own typefaces.

Onur Yazıcıgil is a typographer and design educator based in Istanbul. He received his MFA in Visual Communication Design from Purdue University in the United States, and a PhD in Graphic Design from Mimar Sinan University. He has served as a board member at ATypI between 2013–2019 and has lectured on various topics in the field of typography. Since 2009, he has taught typography and graphic design classes as a faculty member at Sabancı University. His research interests range from Latin and Arabic typographic history to 19th century Ottoman metal typefaces, with a particular emphasis on Ottoman naskh typefaces.