THE PERSON BEHIND THE WORK

THE
MANIFESTO

Mahdi Fneish, art director
MAHDI FNEISH · BEIRUT, LEBANON

I design things people should feel before they have to understand them.

01

Decoration follows direction.

A brand is not a logo, a palette or a moodboard. It is a decision about how a thing should be remembered. Everything visual comes after that decision and answers to it.

02

Every project is a world.

Kashif had to feel like a guardian. Baggy had to feel like a personality on a shelf. One grammar, different physics. I let the work set its own rules instead of forcing it through a template.

03

Range is the proof.

Identity, packaging, posters, campaigns, interfaces: the disciplines are one eye applied to different distances. The work proves that better than any list of services could.

04

Restraint is confidence.

Huge type when scale is the argument. Silence when the artifact should speak. The loudest thing on any page I make should be the idea, never the decoration around it.

This site is itself a piece of art direction: charcoal room, oversized statements, quiet metadata. The same principles I bring to client work, turned on my own name.