Every time you scroll through social media, you’re bound to see some type of fan art. Creations, left and right: what if this superhero ended up not dying and started a family while fighting crime? Or on-screen enemies turned friends, and so on and so forth.
But what you don’t see often, however, are posters playing on culture and language expression. The merging of past and present. That’s exactly the case with Egypt’s Abdelrahman Mohamed, a 24-year-old graphic designer who takes Hollywood and Middle East pop culture and turns it on its head by interweaving an Arab and vintage feel that isn’t often seen.
Mohamed, whose eponymous Instagram account boasts over 78,000 followers, is a graduate of computer science. He had been working for over four years as a graphic designer, creating posters. Having a passion for the entertainment industry, Mohamed dreamed up posters for songs, films, TV shows, and even commercials.
However, what set him apart was his time capsule of the past. “I’ve always loved old films— Youssef Chahine and Mohamed Khan’s films— so I have always been fascinated with shots, colors, and details,” he told MILLE.
Taking photos such as Cillian Murphy’s classic Peaky Blinders look wearing a flat cap and adding text to it in vintage Arabic text has quickly garnered people’s attention on social media. The grainy details matched with the popping classic text, Mohamed noted that this was an aesthetic fresh in the industry.
“After receiving a lot of support from my friends, I started to dip my toes even more in the world of graphic design after seeing the positive feedback I was getting; I chose to hone in on this vintage-y style that I felt wasn’t really done before.”
When he first kicked things off, Mohamed focused on his mantra: all that is old is beautiful… old is gold! Creating one TV show poster after the next, he bet that this style is what will continue to boom and garner even more fans, which eventually led to his posters being up for sale through his online shop.
“There are different conversations that I wanted to highlight through my work. People’s attention or value towards carefully paired text with the films or shows that are trending then. Before this venture, no one really used to care about posters, English nor Arabic, and that’s part of my success because I am bringing attention to this culture,” explains the artist, reflecting more on the fact that the posters marry between the East and West in addition to the past and present.
Letting us into this thought process when it comes to selecting ideas for posters, the graphic designer teased, “It’s really either my fan’s request or something that I enjoyed watching or listening to. Of course, I can’t create a good poster from something that I am not initially a fan of.”
Such as any other artist, Mohamed shared the negative criticism he got exposed to throughout his work. “The harshest criticism I recall is that this one time, someone commented that all my work looked the same and that I simply didn’t know what I was doing.”
However, he also noted the best moments, saying, “I didn’t imagine that the poster created for the show, Better Call Saul would be so great but everyone loved it. It was definitely a memorable moment.”
To end our vibrant chat with the artist, we had to know if he were to live during another time, what would it be? “Definitely the ’70s and the posters I would create from that time would be for the films The Land, An Egyptian Story, and Alexandria Why?“
