Studio Safar is a Beirut-based design and art direction studio founded by Hatem Imam, Maral Mikirditsian, Maya Moumne, and Ayman Abiad. As team members coming from a variety of disciplines, we work in the kind of dynamic and exploratory environment evoked by the studio’s name (Safar being Arabic for travel). Our projects span different media and formats such as publications, visual identities, display and set design, packaging, album artwork, and websites. The studio’s members have been trained both locally and internationally in the visual arts, cultural management, graphic design, product design, marketing, and business development. This acquired knowledge feeds into an integrated studio practice that strives on collaboration and dedication.As opposed to having a signature style, we are committed to creating singular design approaches to each project. While we draw on a number of artistic influences and inspirations, research remains central to our design process. We work closely with our clients to consider all the directions a project might take. We work with a network of creative people from a wide array of fields including film, literature, music, fashion, and photography. Members of our team continue to take initiatives in starting a number of projects, such as Annihaya Records and Samandal comics magazine, which contribute to the Lebanese cultural scene and that have become part of international art and design networks.

Launched in 2009 by Raed Yassin, Sharif Sehnaoui and Hatem Imam, Annihaya is a concept musical label that specializes in the displacement, deconstruction and 'recycling' of popular or folkloric musical cultures. The label's mission is to work through popular forms of music whilst skewing their normative diffusion and meanings for the listener. Annihaya seeks to distort boundaries of popular music, oscillating between the familiar and unfamiliar in the aim of positing new ways of listening to original works and the way they impact their listeners. In an effort to pursue an eclectic and playful form of musical production, the label also invites different visual artists to draw and conceive portraits of the musicians, refering to visuals from the Arab world and beyond. This audiovisual mirroring combines the founders' interests in the re-shaping of common references in their various forms.

Graphic Design Department.Faculty of Engineering and Architecture.Courses taught:Basic Design (ARCH 100), Corporate Identity (GRDS 202), Design inthe Community (GRDS 203), Packaging/Installation (GRDS 305); advising forresearch and final year projects (GRDS 406 and GRDS 407); and the professionalelective Contested Land (GRDS 22842)

Samandal is a Lebanese NGO that is dedicated to promoting comics. Besides organizing workshops lectures and events, Samandal publishes a trilingual quarterly magazine that collects and publishes comics from the region and abroad. It aims to provide a platform for the alternative expression of cultural and social issues for adults by publishing reading material that mixes stories from their ownenvironment with international ones.