Stylogenyin the style of Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design

Pictorial & machine age · 1952–1990 · Middle East & North Africa

Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design

Also known as Arab modernist book covers, Dar al-Fata al-Arabi style, Nasser-era Egyptian illustration

The illustrated book, magazine and children's-book culture that ran from Cairo's post-1952 publishing houses to the Arab nationalist and leftist presses of Beirut. Hand-drawn Arabic titles reworked from Kufic and everyday scripts, rough, expressive pen-and-brush drawing and flat offset colour gave mass readers and children a modern, decolonised Arabic page. Helmi el-Touni and Mohieddin Ellabbad also brought folk ornament and borders back to it.

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A vintage-style illustration shows a woman in a patterned headscarf and red embroidered dress holding a large key, with olive branches in the foreground. Behind her are sailboats, a waterfront town with a dome and minaret, birds, and a large golden sun; red Arabic lettering spans the top.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Draw the Arabic title by hand for each book, reworking Kufic and everyday scripts instead of relying on scarce metal type or classical khatt.
  • Illustrate with a rough, expressive pen-and-brush line taken from street life (stray cats, dogs, crowds), and reject sweetened, Disney-style drawing.
  • Print in two or three flat offset colours and let the drawn line carry the image.
  • Reclaim Egyptian and Levantine folk ornament, borders and frames as a modern Arab visual language: ornament is no crime.
  • Address children and mass readers with pan-Arab, socially committed content without reducing the book to propaganda.

Cairo's publishing houses and illustrated magazines, and the Arab nationalist and leftist publishers of Beirut, notably Dar al-Fata al-Arabi (1974)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Ornament-free, Straight photography, Gloss & highlights, Luxurious & glamorous, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Modular grid

Palette

  • #f0e6cf
  • #1c1a17
  • #c4362c
  • #e1a930
  • #2a8a8a
  • #6b7a3a

Typefaces

  • Hand-drawn Kufic-derived Arabic display lettering

  • Hand-lettered titles based on Ruqʿa and Naskh

  • Arabic Naskh text type

Known for

  • Hussein Bicar, illustrations for the children's magazine Sindbad

    Cairo, 1952–1960

  • Mohieddin Ellabbad, co-founder and first art director of Dar al-Fata al-Arabi

    Beirut, 1974

  • Mohieddin Ellabbad, Kashkoul al-Rassam

    The Illustrator's Notebook; Golden Apple, Biennial of Illustration Bratislava

  • Mohieddin Ellabbad, cover for Zakaria Tamer's The Cat's Banquet

    Dar al-Fata al-Arabi

  • Helmi el-Touni, book design for the Beirut Arab Book Fair and the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing

    1974–c. 1984

  • Dar al-Fata al-Arabi illustrators Nazir Nabaa, Kamal Boullata, Laila Shawa and Nawal Traboulsi

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleCairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design1952–1990 · Middle East & North Africa

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Zeina Maasri, Cosmopolitan Radicalism: The Visual Politics of Beirut's Global Sixties (Cambridge University Press, 2020), ch. 4 'Ornament Is No Crime: Decolonizing the Arabic Page from Cairo to Beirut'
  2. Bidoun, 'Revolution for Kids' (https://bidoun.org/articles/revolution-for-kids)
  3. AUB Libraries online exhibit, 'Dar al-Fata al-Arabi' (https://online-exhibit.aub.edu.lb/exhibits/show/dar-el-fata)
  4. Bahia Shehab & Haytham Nawar, A History of Arab Graphic Design (AUC Press, 2020)

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