Dubai Design Week has unveiled a young, modern and yet culturally reflective identity for ‘Wasl’, the first exhibition of design from the Emirates, which opens next week at Beijing Design Week.
Dubai Design Week has unveiled a young, modern and yet culturally reflective identity for ‘Wasl’, the first exhibition of design from the Emirates, which opens next week at Beijing Design Week.
Held as part of the Dubai Guest City programme at the Chinese design festival, September 23 to October 7, ‘Wasl’ is staged in partnership with Dubai Design Week, Dubai Design District, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, Falcon and Associates, as well as art and design institutions Tashkeel, and 1971 – Design Space.
Designed by the creative agency, Bond, the striking ‘Wasl’ identity reflects a young, fast-paced city that is steeped in cultural heritage; a Dubai that is at once a dynamic metropolis and rich environmental eco-system.
Curated by Mouza Almatrooshi, ‘Wasl' unites established designers as well as emerging ones based in the UAE and will be presented as subchapters - Nature States, Domesticity and Urban Metropolis - portraying the diversity of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates.
Nature States consists’ of the environmental components that contributed to the designer’s inspiration for their work. The pieces that fall under this category span the desert, the rugged and remote mountainous areas, the coastal landscape, and the palm tree oases. Domesticity unveils objects and design methods that were implemented on objects that refer to traditional domestic customs that are either still carried out today or have fell into endangerment. Urban Metropolis expresses the responses of the designers to the issues that occur in their modernised cityscape.
For Bond’s designers, drawing on local experience to reflect the UAE’s vibrant, rich and yet often subtle layers was of upmost importance in designing the exhibition’s identity.
Arttu Salovaara, Founder of BOND comments, "Dubai is a city that thrives on collaborations and partnerships, and when we were approached to collaborate with Dubai Design Week on the ‘Wasl' exhibition, we were happy to combine our Nordic design thinking with local insight.”
Majed AlMansoori, Managing Director for BOND Middle East adds, "It was important that the identity for the ‘Wasl' exhibition linked back to the origins of the word ‘Wasl’. Although ‘Al Wasl’ was the traditional name used for Dubai, it also means connecting, and therefore by using a young and bold type that connects from the base of each letter, and a brushstroke inspired by the date palm to form the symbol of the W, we were able to produce a concept that wasn’t just culturally strong, but has international finesse."
"We agree that, on first look, Dubai might seem like a tangle of highways connecting big, unknowable towers, but this city, which will host the 2020 World Expo, has so much more to offer. We are honoured to be part of an exhibition that showcases design that is culturally inspired by the origins of the Emirates, and we are proud to have designed the identity for it.”
With studios in Helsinki and Abu Dhabi, Bond brings together talents from different fields to create cross-disciplinary solutions within identity, digital, retail, spatial, packaging and product design. Bond’s clientele ranges from start-ups to global brands.
Discover more about the ‘Wasl’ exhibition at Beijing Design Week.