Postcard from Cairo
Mohamed Nabil Labib, founder and creative director at Egypt-based Generator Design Agency, chats to Transform about the brand design scene in Cairo and the design trends he’s seeing in the region.
What would you say is distinctive about brand design in Egypt?
Egypt holds unique characteristics that shape its brand design industry. Thanks to geolocation and multicultural effects, Egyptian brands have access to limitless, innovative, cultural design that shapes global insights.
Egyptian branding design revolves around the function of the product or services and seeking a strategy for brand purpose, promise and values for brand language.
Egypt has the opportunity to play a role model for mass communication that needs to be guided with successful brand guidelines for effective brand communication.
In addition, Egyptians have an original dialect that easily distinguishes their brand signature from other Arabic languages in an approachable way – backed by strong media power of approachable communication.
What kind of branding trends exist in Egypt at present?
Consumers are increasingly seeking out sustainability and localisation trends in their brands which reflect the originality of the branding design trends in Egypt.
The hottest thing in Egyptian branding design right now is validating brand problems and feeling brand pain through a simple but effective process that leads to the right design answer for a given identity problem.
Sustainability values and bringing attention to its efforts to become an eco-friendly brand. New ideas about the industry, the user and a unique language come from a mix of intellectual, focused and communicative creativity.
Getting brand localisation right is important for building trust with customers and promoting authenticity in global markets.
How does the brand design scene in Cairo differ from other big Egyptian cities like Alexandria and Port Said?
I would think that Cairo, being such a massive capital, has become something of an outdoor billboard catalogue for corporate designs. This is a symbol of the city's intense real estate movement and the fierce competition among FMCG firms to meet people’s needs.
Comparing to Alexandria, its special design scene shows how the Mediterranean style and real brand discipline could be combined. The city boasts a highly educated consumer aiming for a customised brand language.
Port Said is a quite peaceful city. It’s a free zone for manufacturing and exporting industries, which represents an active brand identity for local and international brands. Port Said has a distinctive architectural pattern that aims to become a reference for a beautiful vintage city branding.
Port Said has a strong sense of local pride, which is different from Cairo's mix of different cultures and design styles. Even Alexandria has a mix of local pride and the ability to represent international brands with a local look and feel.
Do you see a positive future for branding in Egypt?
I believe there is a very fruitful future for brand design in Egypt. Lots of Egyptian design agencies are considered the best in the Middle East and North Africa, even competing with the Mediterranean’s Greece and Portugal for seamless design experiences.
