40MUSTAQEL’s brand for Cinema Akil’s branch in the 25hours Hotel is charged with an electric energy

Cinema Akil, founded by Butheina Kazim, first began as a series of nomadic pop-ups spanning Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, aimed to celebrate film and the cinematic arts across the UAE. Thanks to the booming popularity of the concept, it got a permanent home in Al Quoz, Dubai, making it the first arthouse cinema in the Gulf region. It has now found another spot on the ground floor in the 25hours Hotel in Dubai, where four free screenings are held every week. To mark this new venture, the team behind the cinema called on Cairo-based independent design studio 40MUSTAQEL – founded by Nada Hesham – to give its identity a bit of a facelift, and also use it to underpin this special collaboration with the 25hours Hotel.

The brief called for a bit of research. To start, the team looked at Cinema Akil’s first location in Dubai, which was wrapped wall-to-wall with a Rococo wallpaper that then became an integral part of the cinema’s identity. There was also the flagship logo that needed to be extended to celebrate the 25hours Hotel’s industrial venue, and then there was the rich, ever-pervasive tone of red, Cinema Akil’s de factor colour. And so began a process of orchestration, of pulling some elements from the existing identity, adding others, and building on them to create something entirely new.

The Rococo wallpaper provided food for thought. “We felt the Rococo element lends to Cinema Akil’s ethos of reviving the nostalgic experience of theatre-going,” Associate Creative Director Mina Maurice tells us. “It evokes a sense of travelling back in time and transporting the cinema-goer to a period where theatres and cinemas were more than just about going to “see a movie,” and functioned as a cultural, communal and social hub.” The team pulled a flower motif from the wallpaper and handed it to Bengaluru-based 3D artist Kushagra Gupta who created a pulsating set of artworks, soaked in red. “Kushagra’s art lent a powerful hand in amplifying the industrial and experiential aesthetic of the venue, and elevating the ‘Cinema Akil in 25hours’ experience,” adds Art Director Tasneem Hozaien.

Simultaneously, the studio updated the identity to include the hotel’s name. “The calligraphic mark builds on the original logo, however, we played up the double entendre within the chosen name with the location of the 25hours Hotel and the tongue-in-cheek implication of meeting at the theatre in 25 hours,” shares Maurice. For the text in English, the team used the hotel’s official typeface, Trade Gothic. The Arabic calligraphy was extended with the help of Egyptian calligrapher Ahmed Fahd, a frequent collaborator of the studio, and the team added Dinamo’s Favorit Arabic to the mix to create non-display communication assets.

Working with the two writing systems presented its own set of challenges. “The difference in structure for one; the Latin script is commonly set in block letters while Arabic is fundamentally written in a cursive form,” explains Hozaien, adding that the difference in expression and contrast is a factor to consider while working with two different scripts. “In this case, we chose the romantic appeal of the traditional Arabic Naskh script to be the dominant element, while the more reserved, narrow gothic Latin letters of the descriptor helped to ground the logo and achieve a balanced visual impression.”

40MUSTAQEL

Cinema Akil