360east

Category: SYNTAX

  • Amman the FFilm: a font, a city, and a piece of my life..

    From a message I sent Yanone, the designer of the FF Amman typeface after watching a preview of this film he created. “Ok.. I just watched the entire film. On my iPad.. The film had a strange effect on me. Somehow it encapsulated my career and life for the last 10 years. It’s not just…

  • Wamda: it started with a spark, now in beta!

    For the past seven months, our company duo, SYNTAX and Spring has been working on their most revolutionary web project to date. What was just a sketchy idea by early 2010, has become a groundbreaking, living, breathing web venture: Wamda.com, a hub that, for the first time, creates a focal point for the Middle East’s…

  • This Tuesday: Come to Al-Balad Theater and meet the new (type)face of Amman

    SYNTAX and Al-Balad Theater present: “The New (Type)face of Amman” German type-design rising star Yanone will be telling the story of his Amman typeface, created for the Amman Municipality’s “Amman Brand” project in collaboration with SYNTAX. The result of this project is now “FF Amman”, a professional typeface marketed worldwide by FontShop, as one of…

  • Wamda, a hub for the region’s entrepreneurs and change-makers will go into private-beta soon

    Nothing like being able to start showing people what I’ve been immersed in the past few months! It’s been a crazy journey for the team at SYNTAX and Spring and it will only get crazier. What was a sketchy idea a few months ago has turned into a full fledged project with a powerful vision:…

  • Teacher, artist and, yes, the Sheikh of Amman!

    When the self proclaimed “Sheikh of Amman” comes walking through the door at the SYNTAX offices, its not an ordinary day, especially when he comes unannounced. It’s now over 21 years that I’ve met Ali Maher for the first time, on my first day of being an Architecture student at the University in Jordan, sometime…

  • On physical junk, mental junk and the joys spring cleaning

    We’re SYNTAX. And we create junk. Celebrating 12 years of junk production. And 10 years of accumulating it in one office. We’re spring cleaning. Read more in the SYNTAX:CONTEXT blog.

  • Counterparts – Ammani House 28 in transition

    Photo: Dina Haddadin House 28 on the corner of Rainbow Street is in a state of flux. The old landlady and her old, bed-ridden husband have passed away. It seems like yesterday she was showing Ahmad Sabbagh and me through the apartment under the main house. That apartment became what I called the “SYNTAX house”.…

  • SYNTAX wins Jordan’s best website prize at the Jordan Web Awards

    Check this out: the sweat and tears (almost) that the SYNTAX (and Spring) team poured into the Amman Centennial website paid off in a new way. It was a nice surprise that we won the Jordan Web Awards best site of 2009 prize. But there’s a catch: the trophy was so damn heavy, my arm…

  • SYNTAX gets its own Word Guru

    For me, design and writing are the same thing, and I do quite a lot of both. Sometimes I tell people that what got me into design was some weird passion for publishing (like doing a newsletter for our household when I was aged 12 or something like that). At our company SYNTAX, content and…

  • My Amman: re-discovering, re-engaging, re-connecting our city

    My Amman View more documents from SYNTAX. I had the pleasure of being invited by Jordanian social entrepreneur (and self proclaimed “doctor of companies, governments and peoples”) Maher Kaddoura, to give a talk about ‘My Amman’ at the pilot of NewThink, an initiative to spread a culture of positive action, a can-do attitude and entrepreneurship…

  • Amman’s most colorful day: a city no longer ashamed of itself!

    For the past two years, the subject of Amman has been unavoidable for me. Not only do I live in this city, but I’ve also been, with my company SYNTAX, involved in the first big branding effort this city has undertaken. I am overdosed on Amman! The branding project has been completed but writing about…

  • Experience Amman and its story: the most comprehensive city history site ever

    It’s been a long time in the making, but now its here. Never before has Amman’s story been presented to its citizens and guest so vividly and comprehensively. It’s still a work in progress that Ammanis and their guest will complete in the coming months and years. I am talking about the Amman Centennial website,…