Style combination · Contrasts

Arab Children's Comic Magazines × Arab Independent Comics

The adult, black-ink, dialect satire of Samandal and TokTok answers these mostly state-backed children's weeklies: set one raw independent strip against a bright magazine page to show the break.

From the research on Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

Mix them and make something Arab Children's Comic Magazines Arab Independent Comics

A colourful comic-style poster with a large Arabic title shows four children and a black-and-white cat exploring a seaside town. Bordered panels show them climbing steps between colourful buildings, flying a kite, and sitting together overlooking the water at sunset. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Arab Independent Comics, the form from Arab Children's Comic Magazines, the composition from Arab Children's Comic Magazines. Not a real or historical work.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)

Type from Arab Independent Comics: Hand-lettering
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Arab Independent Comics: Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Arab Independent Comics

Pop

Rakkas, standing in for Hand-lettered colloquial Arabic balloons (Egyptian ʿāmmiyya in TokTok and Garage, Tunisian in Lab619, Moroccan darija, with Amazigh, in Skefkef)

Text · Arab Children's Comic Magazines

Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists. Pages read right to left: flat bright full-colour panels, rounded cartoon children in local dress, hand-lettered Arabic balloons and drawn sound effects, shared with quizzes, puzzles, contests, letters and lessons, under a boy mascot who names the magazine. The look is that of the colour weeklies of the 1950s to 1990s; Majid went monthly in 2020, redesigned by Studio Safar.

Archivo; Arab Children's Comic Magazines used Hand-lettered Arabic balloon text, read right to left and Drawn Arabic onomatopoeia and expressive balloon lettering

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Arab Children's Comic Magazines, with a counter-accent from Arab Independent Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)

#f6f0dc ground · 36%
#1d1a17 ink · 14%
#f6c928 accent · 18%
#e23b2e accent · 14%
#2f8fd0 accent · 10%
#3f9b4a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6f0dc;
  --ink: #1d1a17;
  --accent-1: #f6c928;
  --accent-2: #e23b2e;
  --accent-3: #2f8fd0;
  --accent-4: #3f9b4a;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid): Samir, Majid, Kaslan Jiddan, Fudooli, Ammouna and the magazines' mastheads belong to their publishers (Dar al-Hilal, Abu Dhabi Media) and artists, and the Arabic Disney and Tintin pages to Disney and Hergé's estate: draw your own mascot, characters and masthead, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as a vintage issue. The tradition's artists also drew caricature, such as 'Ib Goha and Sambo' by Samir co-founder Haroon, about an Arab boy and his Black Nubian sidekick Sambo: give every character, Black, Nubian, foreign or villain, the same drawing care, and never make skin colour or features the joke. Draw everyday Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf children in the dress they actually wear (gallabiya, kandura and ghutra, shayla, school uniforms), not Orientalist shorthand (camels, harem veils, oil-sheikh caricatures, pseudo-Arabic squiggles), and do not copy Hergé's stereotyped Arabs of the invented Khemed, who are 'always the punchline' (Nadim Damluji). Leave religious pages to writers and readers of the faith, and have all Arabic lettering written or checked by a fluent reader, joined and running right to left.

Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef): These are living, named artists working under real censorship: Samandal's editors were prosecuted and fined over two comics, and an Egyptian cartoonist was arrested in January 2016, so never attribute invented political or religious satire to a real artist or collective, and never ask an image model for their work by name. Draw the contemporary city life these artists draw, not Orientalist shorthand: no camels, veiled women, sheikhs or gunmen as stand-ins for 'Arab', and no pseudo-Arabic squiggles. Have every line of dialect Arabic, Darija or Amazigh written or checked by a fluent speaker; if no fluent reader can check it, leave the balloons empty or letter them in Latin script only. Do not borrow the religious and sectarian jokes as edgy decoration outside the communities that made them.

The two styles

A colourful Arabic comic poster shows children discovering litter on a beach, collecting it with gloves and bags, sorting waste into coloured bins, and celebrating together. In the bottom panel, four children sit facing the sea and a sunset, with sailboats and a coastal town in the distance.

1956–present · Middle East & North Africa Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists. Pages read right to left: flat bright full-colour panels, rounded cartoon children in local dress, hand-lettered Arabic balloons and drawn sound effects, shared with quizzes, puzzles, contests, letters and lessons, under a boy mascot who names the magazine. The look is that of the colour weeklies of the 1950s to 1990s; Majid went monthly in 2020, redesigned by Studio Safar.

A comic-style poster follows a curly-haired person in a purple hoodie searching for a black-and-white cat through city streets, beside a bus, beneath a vehicle, and across rooftops. The final panel shows the person cuddling the cat on a rooftop beneath a yellow moon.

2007–present · Middle East & North Africa Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef) Adult comics magazines edited by Arab artists' collectives since 2007, at times with a ministry grant or an NGO partner: Samandal in Beirut, TokTok in Cairo, Lab619 in Tunis and Skefkef in Casablanca. Each issue gathers many hands and no house style, from grubby brush caricature to fine-art pages, much of it in black ink. Balloons mostly speak street dialect, not classical Arabic, and Samandal ran Arabic right to left beside French and English left to right. Satire aims at police, sect, sex and religion; two comics deemed blasphemous cost Samandal's editors a conviction and fines in 2015.

More combinations

With Arab Children's Comic Magazines

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