We are proud to release our new logo. Designed by Marwa Gadallah, Hazine’s Art Editor, alongside the rest of the team, it is the product of over six months of brainstorming and drafts. But it is also reflective of all of the changes that have been going on at Hazine over the last year. For one thing, we’ve been doing more Arabic content. We’re running more guides and resources on researching various regions and peoples from the Kurds to Afghanistan. We’re publishing essays and criticism on pedagogy, museums, archives, typography and more. And as we become more criticism-oriented, you’ll see more comics, more photo essays, things that break moulds.
Our logo touches on different aspects of this shift. It is part of a long calligraphic and visual history. As Hazine seeks to be a platform that is more representative of the histories and sensibilities in the Islamic worlds and its multitudes, it was important that the visual identity we developed reflected this very purpose. Gadallah was influenced by traditional Arabic scripts and is also trained in several Arabic calligraphic forms (and counting!) She was learning the Qairouany Kufic script from the Egyptian master Ustadh Salah Abd Elkhalek when this project began. Thus, the main icon in the logo, an Arabic-script representation of the term “Hazine” (“خزينة”), or treasury, is written in this script, which was developed in the fifth year of Al-Hijrah and used to write a single mushaf in 410 H in Kairouan, Tunisia. Ustadh Salah had travelled from Egypt to Tunisia and learned it from the Tunisian master Ustadh Amer Benjeddou, who is responsible for bringing the Qairouany Kufic script back into the classroom. This historical master-to-student process of transmitting the Islamic arts is what makes this particular logo design special: we can trace the line of students to teachers, teachers to students.
While working on the logo, sketching the word “Hazine” in Qairouany Kufic did not take much time. However, it was challenging to balance the various elements of the logo. We played with the overall shape until we decided on the final triangular structure, as well as the dots. Another challenge involved deciding how the Arabic script would look in relation to the Latin script. At first, we sought to create two equally balanced logos that would make up a bilingual logo and then we realized that the Arabic script could serve as a main legible icon whilst the Latin would go alongside the main Arabic icon. Thus, we got rid of the equal balance between the Arabic and Latin scripts.
Hazine is also very much dedicated to manuscripts of the Islamic worlds and the many peoples it encompasses. So, the other visual elements of the logo, including the colors and the background, were inspired by the manuscript traditions. The text is in blood-red and black, similar to many manuscripts of the Arabic language. Black is used for the body-script and red is often added later for dots; we switched this up because while we want to pay homage to manuscript culture, we’re not necessarily part of just manuscript culture. The background is made to look like paper, produced out of rags, linen and rope; the splotches on the beige background are intentional: they convey water damage. With the logo, we are beginning a visual identity that will be found in various parts of the website, our marketing tools, and our publications themselves. It was important for us to use a touchstone that felt universal, but also, that we could apply to different projects. The Arabic-script manuscript has a universality to it that, even today, we could emulate.
We also updated our tagline. “A Guide to Researching the Middle East and Beyond” isn’t simply what we’re doing anymore. Frankly, the term ‘ Middle East’ isn’t appropriate. Additionally, we don’t guide: we converse, even in our archive reviews. Instead, we are dedicating ourselves: “For the Researchers of the Diverse Islamic Worlds.” Worlds exist within worlds and we take “Islamic” to mean anywhere Islam has a presence. We’re not the only ones to do so: Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) uses “Islamic Worlds,” too. Our new tagline doesn’t mean we cover Islam only. That’s why we need “diverse” in there.
We also want to note that we used an open source program (Inkscape) while building the logo. If you’ve seen our content on open-access materials –and we currently have a call for pitches for pieces on open access– you know how we feel about accessibility.
Maybe one day the website will expand again and we’ll need to rethink our logo, our tagline. But for now, we are happy with this embodiment, we are proud of it, and at least, with the Arabic-script representation of our publication’s name, no one will ask us why we’re named after Arabic for “sad”.