Studio Safar

Catalogue design for ’s first edition, a design and sustainability initiative reimagining crafted pieces and industrial fragments as cultural artifacts.

Conceived by and , and curated by , the inaugural edition (in partnership with Najem Group) brought together 53 designers to transform discarded stone into collectible works.

Format: 21 × 29.7 cm (A4)
Extent: 176 pages
Medium: Print and digital publication

Photographers: , , , .hurtut

Publication design for and , In the Face of the Dragon (2025).

Documentation views from the exhibition at SculptureCenter, New York. Copies of In the Face of the Dragon are stacked on shelves throughout SculptureCenter’s dark basement, inviting visitors to navigate the space and read by the light they carry.

Installation view: In Practice: Nadim Choufi, SculptureCenter, New York, 2025
Photos: Charles Benton

Nadim Choufi’s work explores how ideals of progress manifest and seduce, and the price of such visions on the lives subjected to their realization. Through sculpture, film, and text, Choufi draws on visual and literary practices that oppose or complicate narratives of national and global progress. For Choufi’s project at SculptureCenter, he has produced a new publication, In the Face of the Dragon, in which he composed a cento poem from lines borrowed from Arab poets who transform themselves, their lovers, and their people into animals and natural elements, speaking through these tongues of love and resistance.

Two issues ago, underwent a major shift in format. We reduced the physical size of the publication and invited to rethink the cover template, beginning with Issue 8. The cover was reimagined as an object instead of a surface: the full list of contributors runs along the spine in very small type, while select elements from previous covers were retained to maintain continuity.

Another significant update to the magazine’s template is the treatment of Arabic article titles. All titles are hand-lettered by Khalil Majed, scanned, and placed as-is. Some contain irregularities and minor mistakes, but we rarely intervene in the work of a calligrapher whose practice spans five to six decades, the hand carries its own authority.

SWERVE: Exquisite Co**se
Vol. I

A limited-edition box set of 150, conceived by and in collaboration with Julie Mehretu, , , and Lawrence Chua, bringing together wine, art, and publication as a single, integrated work.

Each box set includes three wine bottles by Antica Terra, original artwork by Julie, Jessica, and Paul, alongside SWERVE: Exquisite Co**se, Vol. I, a publication conceived as part of the edition.

The cuvées were developed by Julie, Jessica, and Paul in collaboration with Antica Terra winemaker Maggie Harrison, and in dialogue with their original artworks, which later became the bottle labels. A fourth bottle, produced alongside but not included in the box set, unites the three cuvées and bears the combined drawings as an exquisite co**se.

Beginning from the inside out, featured here are the four bottles.

“…this real joy of encountering something unexpected in that process that I think we—as a group of friends, collaborators, q***r family—continue to surprise each other and also take each other’s thinking to new, unexpected places. And then the other thing that just came up in talking to Maya and Mia [of Studio Safar] is how the whole process of assembling this from the tasting and mixing of the wine to thinking through the concept and producing the actual edition also has been about an exquisite co**se, or exquisite corpsing. I like that we’re thinking of that term as a verb. And maybe that’s what we’re giving back to the Surrealists is this idea that it doesn’t necessarily resolve in an object, in a dead object, but that it is a process. A living process. I think this edition is an encapsulation of that, in that there is something living in these boxes—the wine, the ideas, the images…”
—Lawrence Chua

Designed by Studio Safar
Photos by for Antica Terra

Twelve months of grids, typesetting, low-res images (and the revelation that newspapers don’t need 300dpi which could’ve saved us a few dramatic spirals), widows and orphans, justification battles, pull-quotes, and late-night production rounds for

Nine issues in, with the 10th-anniversary issue landing and launching tonight in New York, in an entirely new format.

It’s been a year of building and experimenting with the incredible team at

Everything is Political is a members-only periodical published by , investigating the cultural, social, and environmental forces that shape our world today. We’ve had the pleasure of designing it from identity to publication.

Here’s to Issue 10, and to many more.

photographed by rose photographed by
photographed by .studio
photographed by albanese.unsr.opt and photographed by
photographed by

In June 2024, partnered with to launch an open call for contributors to the latest issue of Design Drafts, featured in Journal Safar #9. From 111 applications, five contributors were selected for publication. The submissions were so strong that we also included five additional pieces in Journal Safar #9. The jury included Ahmad Gharbieh, , , , , , and .

Design Drafts is a growing writing and publishing network dedicated to exploring what it means to write about design today. Through collaborations with magazines and publishing platforms worldwide, the series seeks to spark new forms of design writing and discourse, engaging in a collective search for the languages we use to write design. Past editions include Design Drafts #1 with (London, 2022) and Design Drafts #2 with (New York, 2023).

Editing and designing Design Drafts #3 has been a brilliant ride, thank you to and for being an incredible team to work with. Like Journal Safar, the issue is fully bilingual, with all titles hand-lettered by calligrapher Khalil Majed. Managing editor: , production manager: .akiki

Contributors to Design Drafts #3 include .azh and

Contributors to Journal Safar #9 include .dae and .

Logo design for Halapop, the vibrant new prebiotic soda making its debut.

Full brand identity and illustrations coming soon.
Tagline set in 29LT Azer By

Publication design for and , In the Face of the Dragon, 2025

Nadim Choufi’s work explores how ideals of progress manifest and seduce, and the price of such visions on the lives subjected to their realization. Through sculpture, film, and text, Choufi draws on visual and literary practices that oppose or complicate narratives of national and global progress. For Choufi’s project at SculptureCenter, he has produced a new publication, In the Face of the Dragon, in which he composed a cento poem from lines borrowed from Arab poets who transform themselves, their lovers, and their people into animals and natural elements, speaking through these tongues of love and resistance.

Opening Reception
Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 5–8pm
Performance lecture by and .saade
New York

Opening September 18

Identity and exhibition design assets for , a design and sustainability initiative that reimagines crafted pieces and industrial fragments as cultural artifacts. Conceived by and and curated by , the inaugural edition (in partnership with Najem Group) brings together 53 designers to transform discarded stone fragments into collectible works.

We loved the process they shared with the participating designers:
1. Select from Najem Group’s archive of marble offcuts, samples, and fragments collected over decades.
2. Design pieces with at least 70% marble, keeping transformations minimal so the stone leads.
3. Work hands-on with Najem Group’s engineers and artisans to shape each piece.
4. Finalize production at the factory before launching at the public event debuting Fragmenta.

Portraits of the designers by
Photos of the process and factory by

Japanese-American filmmaker () Eimi Imanishi’s debut feature, Nomad Shadow, follows Mariam, a young Sahrawi woman deported from Spain and desperate to return to Europe after being sent back to Western Sahara (which was partitioned between Morocco and Mauritania 50 years ago). Premiered at TIFF 2025.

In a bid to approach the calligraphy critically, the Arabic title (ظل بدوي) avoids scripts tied to state aesthetics and instead uses a hybrid, deconstructed form that loosely borrows from classical traditions. The construction marks (circular units, dots, and spatial guides usually erased in refinement) remain visible as part of the visual field, avoiding fixed readings and nationalist inscriptions.