Here’s something very, very cool to round out your week.
Adonis Durado is design director of the Times of Oman. You might recall that paper won 36 awards of excellence earlier this year from the Society for News Design.
Founded in 1975, the Times is actually two daily papers, both based in Muscat, the capital city of Oman. The Arabic version has a daily circulation of 15,000. The English version circulates 45,000 daily.
Adonis tells us of a very special month-long project his staff just completed. He writes:
During the month of August, Times of Oman cooked up something special in observant of the holy month of Ramadan.
In Ramadan, it has been customary for newspapers in the Middle East to devote space on Islamic-related stories – it’s either an article or a wholesome package. Last year, our newspaper published a series of Ramadan articles, so this year we decided to take this a little further by coming up with a blanket poster.
When Adonis says a “blanket poster,” he’s referring to one of those projects in which readers can save each page, connect them in a certain way and create an enormous wall poster-like presentation.
Adonis continues:
What makes this poster more interesting is that it poses as the biggest Eid greeting card ever! Ramadan culminates in the Muslim calendar on the holiday called “Eid al-Fitr”, the festivity that marks the end a month-long of fasting and spirituality. So, the humongous Arabic script in our poster reads “Eid Sayed” which means “Happy Eid.”
Full pages ran in the Times from the start of Ramadan — Aug. 2 — through Monday, Aug. 29. That’s 28 days in all.
And here’s the result. Click on this for a much, much larger view.
Adonis writes:
The dimension of the poster measures 174 cm x 212 cm – a total of 24 full pages in a 6×4 grid.
For those of us not on the metric system, that’s five feet, 8.5 inches across by just under 7 feet tall.
There are common elements atop each page. A logo at the upper left identifies the project. Because lunar phases are so important to Ramadan, there is a small diagram and a countdown. There’s a daily devotional thought.
And, of course, a small diagram on the right that shows how to collect and assemble the pieces.
Adonis sent a few complete pages for us to see. Click on any of these for a larger look. Here is the first day’s page, which ran Tuesday, Aug. 2.
The highlight of this page is the wonderful illustration. Click for a larger look at just the illo.
Day five on Sunday, Aug. 7, featured a piece on the physical need for getting on one’s knees for prayer.
The infographic explains how to find Qibla — the correct direction in which to face.
Day six explains why the moon is important to setting the dates of Ramadan.
The graphic goes into great detail as to how to use various means to determine when Ramadan begins.
What I love about these pages is that it’s not all about 1,000-year old tradition. Please note the little guy checking his laptop.
Day 15 — which ran Thursday, Aug. 18 — featured the traditional way Muslims clean their teeth…
…with a natural twig called miswak.
I seem to recall learning a similar technique 40 years ago in Boy Scouts. Surely that descended from this ancient tradition.
Again, Ramadan is holy for most of the readers of the Times. So yes, these pages have a very heavy religious bent to them.
Day 21 — Thursday, Aug. 25 — covered the topic of the tradition of keeping a woman’s head covered. I enjoyed reading this piece, especially in light of the mess that went down earlier this week in New York.
Again, clicking on any of these pages should bring up a readable version.
I’ve been calling these hijabs, but I see now that hijabs are only certain types of scarves. This graphic shows the difference between eight different head coverings.
The final day — this past Monday, Aug. 29 — marked the end of Ramadan and the traditional celebration of Eid Murbarak.
And now, perhaps the most amazing part about the entire project: There was only one week between the time they had the idea and when the first page ran.
Wow. Adonis tells us:
I told my team that in order for this project to work out, we have to nail down the whole shape and basic structure before the publication date kicks off. Polishing and tweaking would have to done on the run.
It’s a backbreaking experience, but it’s worth it. We are all happy with the idea that we are doing something different and something that has never been done before here in Oman. And given the time constraint, I think my team had done a superb job with the final result.
Here is Adonis’ talented visuals team:
Left: Osama Aljawish, calligrapher. Right: Winie Ariany, illustrator.
Left: Antonio Farach, graphics editor. Right: Greg Fernandez, designer.
Left: Aftab Kola, writer. Right: Sahir K.M., designer.
Left: Waleed Rabin, project coordinator and lead designer. Right: Lucille Umali, illustrator
Adonis was kind enough to quickly walk us through the process of how this came together. He writes…
The initial look of the page plan.
Design director [Adonis himself at left] and project coordinator [Waleed Rabin] brainstorm and critique the plan — the visual flow and distribution of stories. One of the key questions posed here: Which story will carry the dominant image or which story will serve as the focal point?
We get the graphics editor [Antonio Farach] involved. The discussion is how or what stories need layering.
Our calligrapher [Osama Aljawish] in action.
Digitizing and tweaking the Arabic script.
Creating actual page mockup to anticipate problems in proportion and consistency in our illustration style.
That is project coordinator Waleed Rabin speaking with illustrator Lucille Umali and designer Sahir K.M.
That photo must be of a size-only mockup. Note what appear to be classified ads there in the center.
That’s illustrator Lucille Umali again, I believe.
Shooting our models.
Illustrators at work.
That’s illustrator Lucille Umali yet again. This next one shows fellow illustrator Winie Ariany.
Researching and preparing the graphic.
Critiquing the illustrations.
Progress of the page dummy.
The writer [Aftab Kola] and project coordinator [Waleed Rabin] discuss the story treatment.
Another round of design tweaks.
Adonis marks up the changes he seeks.
First issue and the daily progression.
Times of Oman CEO Ahmed bin Essa Al Zedjali mounts the page of the day.
The team poses in jubilation – at last, it’s over!
I uploaded that last one extra large, if you’d care to click on it. The boss, Adonis, is the one being silly. Of course.
I don’t have the savvy to give you a slideshow here in the blog. But here is a quick sequence of photos that show you what the wall there in the newsroom looked like once each day’s printed page was added.
Click on any of these for a larger view.
Again, the Times of Oman won a ton of awards from SND this year. I’m looking forward to watching Adonis accept accolades for his work and that of his staff later this month in St. Louis.
A few samples of work by Adonis’ staff:
See many more — plus a picture of the design staff and a Q&A with Adonis — at the Newspaper Design site.
This is just amazing, I am really impressed. Congratulations to all involved.
It’s a beautiful project, but I wonder how some Muslims would receive it since there’s a proscription against depiction of sentient beings in the Hadith. I guess it all depends on how conservative the readership is. I know it’s more of a Sunni thing, but I’m not Muslim and I don’t know the sectariam makeup of Oman so I don’t pretend to understand all the intricacies – it seems like an interesting intercultural communications question to me.