Graphic Design, Research, Curation and Art Direction

The House of The Living

2026; Cairo, Egypt

Graphic Design and Art Direction
Curation and Exibition by Céline Burnand

Rooted in René Burnand’s photographic archive and Céline Burnand’s research in Cairo, The House of the Living / Beit Al Hayat revisits the history of a tuberculosis sanatorium in Helwan. Combining literature, historical imagery, and personal archives, the exhibition constructs a fictional narrative around the lives of its former patients. The result is a layered reflection on memory, absence, and the intersections of medical and cultural histories.

The concept centers on reactivating writings and archival elements within a contemporary spatial context, while honoring their inherent sense of nostalgia.

Noia Magazine – Issue 04: Absurd Rituals

2025; London, the UK/Milan, Italy

Art Direction and Editorial Design
Creative Direction by Lorenzo Bigatti
Editor-in-Chief: Megan Krahn

Offset Printing in Italy 2025

Published by Noia Magazine (available via noia.works)

The Rituals are deeply human constructs that emerge from belief and intention. Some are devised through necessity or deliberate thought as efforts to structure meaning, order, or identity; others persist beyond the relevancy of the original logic. In this way, rituals are both rationally composed and ritually re-enacted, performed less to fulfil a conscious aim than to preserve inherited forms of sense-making.

In this issue, we explors the theme of Absurd Rituals and digs into forgotten traditions, contemporary obsessions, and investigating the cultural underpinnings of human nature. It leads with curiosity, asking more questions than it answers, harkening further conversations.

CHRONICLES: A Series of Collaborative Acts

2025; Glasgow, Scotland & Cairo Egypt

Project Directors: Sally Skerrett, Seònaid MacKay, Rana Wassef
Editorial/Art Direction: Rana Wassef
Cairo Participants: Aliah Shepl, Felomina Amir, Mariam Hassan, Nada Shaheen, Nagi Gabr, Nathalie Ghattas, Rokaya Mohammed
Glasgow Participants: Henry Neame, Joseph Jones-Mantle, Joe Cawthan, Florence Wright, Martyna Madon, Caitlin Clavin
1st Edition, 2025 — Printed in Cairo
© 2025 German University in Cairo & Glasgow School of Art

This publication is the result of a collaboration between Graphic Design students at the German University in Cairo and Communication Design students at The Glasgow School of Art.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2025, participants met online for discussions that gradually evolved into a shared project: a publication exploring a series of themes through the lens of both cities. Using visual design as a medium for dialogue, participants created work and exchanged it back and forth between Cairo and Glasgow.

Through this process, ideas shifted, perspectives were challenged, and new meanings emerged. Each chapter captures a conversation between participants in both cities, reflecting their attempts to find connections and respond to their surroundings through design.

This publication has many voices, thirteen in fact. It celebrates not only what the participants produced, but also the process behind it: the conversations, experiments, and transformations that emerge from designing collaboratively across borders.

From Books to Rocks

2024; Lauenburg/Elbe, Germany

Recidency on Research, Art and Design

Hosted by Künstlerhaus Lauenburg

A Residency hosted by Künstlerhaus Lauenburg on the boundries between Art and Design, following the exhbition “Blurring the lines”. In this recidency, Rana continued on her previous researches and experimentations around the topic of Nature, aiming to break free from the format of a Book. She found herself observing the bodies of rocks by the Elbe River.

She then started her documentation process, where she used different mediums: still image, moving image and audio recording. She then collected rocks and the next step was writing and drawing.

This is still an on going research process, with no current design outcome. The questions remains, will it be a Book?

Blurring the Lines Exhibition

2024; Lauenburg/Elbe, Germany

Exhibition Design and Curation
Curation by Marita Landgraf & Káschem Büro (Insa Kühlcke-Schmoldt & Nina Massow)
Co-curation by Jian Haake, Stoodio Santiago da Silva (Ana Cecilia Breña & Santiago da Silva) and Rana Wassef
Graphic Design by Annika Dorau and Káschem Büro
Window Lettering by Rana Wassef

An Exhibition on Design practice between Art and Visual Communication, bringing together a variety of creative works to showcase the individual modes of expression and practice of designers and artists. The exhibition explores the interrelationships between visual communication and art: free spaces and grey areas, overlaps, dialogues and collaborations. The intention is to blur the rigid boundaries between the two fields and professional descriptions and to use exemplary positions to show ways in between.

The concept for the exhibition was developed in the “in-between” and in close collaboration between curators and co-curators, who together, contribute with works and invite designers and artists to bring the exhibition vision to life.

Modern Animal Journal 2024

2024; Barcelona, Spain

Editorial Design, Newspaper/Journal

29 cm x 38 cm—32 Pages

Graphic Design and Art Direction with Mark Schlickmann
Drawings by Rana Wassef
Published by Modern Animal Magazine
Distributed by Antenne Books, the UK

Modern Animal Journal 2024 is a newspaper sized calendar with drawings of animals illustrating each month to come. The journal is for keeping track of your annual journey with space to organize your thoughts, intentions, and instinctively let your animal free!

The Unreliable Scientific Method to Memory and Material Culture

2023; Barcelona, Spain

Editorial Design, Book
14 cm x 24 cm—256 Pages

Concept, Design and Art Direction with Thomas Suadicani

Awarded by; ADG Laus (Spain), Young Ones ADC (U.S.), Walter Tiemann Prize (Germany), It's a book Leipzig (Germany), Macau Design Awards (China)

The human brain. A vital, complex and powerful organ. Controller of all body activities, it allows us to think, feel and act. Inside it, lies a compelling faculty: the Memory. A mysterious neuro-chemical process that is crucial to the human experience. Crucial, but far from being perfect. Memory has its flaws and pitfalls…

In this book we address the matter of uncertainty. Is our memory reliable? Can our memory be altered? Can we protect our memory? These questions are investigated in the form of a scientific experiment, in which we try to find solutions to these problems in the realm of artifacts and materials. Which effects do artifacts have in the human memory? Can materiality be the key to repairing it?

Modern Animal Magazine

2023; Barcelona, Spain

Editorial Design, Magazine
26 cm x 32 cm—220 Pages

Concept, Design and Art Direction with Mark Schlickamnn

Awarded by; ADG Laus (Spain)

Modern Animal is a biannual magazine that displays the interaction between animals and the new–fashioned world, which metaphorically speaks about humans themselves. In a world where humans are trying to be animals and animals are set to act more human, we blur the lines between the human and animal existence.

Each issue of Modern Animal is based on a one word concept. The first three issues are; Alter, Bliss and Sleek. They follow the language of being verbal, highly spirited, curious, imaginative and symbolic. Simply, Modern Animal is for eccentric people who share interest for animals and contemporary culture, or just find animals cute.

Nothing and Everything

2023; Barcelona, Spain

Editorial Design, Website
Concept, Design and Art Direction with Lucia Alabart

Nothing and Everything is a data collecting and archiving tool that can be used for absurd research by featuring matters using variable media like; sound, images and text.

We are on going and everlasting. We question the why and the reason behind the symbioses of information and randomness. In this journey we invite curious opinionated people, visual researchers, auditory researchers and poetics of existence. Those who embrace randomness, absurdity, curiosity, clutter, possibilities, poetry and philosophy.

We exist simply because we want people to mindfully indulge on the wholesomeness of the research journey by going through an archive that goes against the ordinary methodologies. We are changing perceptions.

La Furia y La Aguanta by Laia Albert

2023; Barcelona, Spain

Editorial Design, Photobook
14 cm x 24 cm—256 Pages

Concept, Design and Art Direction with Lena Arshakyan, Carla Gasparrini, Claudia Tardito and Miguel Cáceres

La Furia y El Aguante is a documentation of the city of Buenos Aires and the way it invades its inhabitants. It showcases the way the city and the urbanism is smashing and oppressing the people. Saturation was the main feeling Laia highlights in her photography, thus it became a big part of the book concept and art direction.

The book is divided into three sections; The Bridge, Medianeras (the sidewalls of buildings) and The River. The Bridge represents duality and the division in the city. Medianeras are static. They are ever present and they’re not going to disappear. The River is full of movement and flow. It represents action and hope which is why it also comes at the end of the book. At the end it’s a story of La Furia y El Aguante.

100 Poster Battle II × Sharing Cultural Identities

2022; Germany & Cairo, Egypt

Editorial Design, Book
17 cm x 24 cm—272 Pages
Designed and Edited with Claudia Mai, Eyad Abushaar, Jacqueline Dalüge, Marie Bochen and Nouran Ahmed
Published by Slanted Publishers

An experimental bilingual poster design project that brings together students from different universities to design posters, covering the topics: Fashion & Subculture, Food, and City. In a first round, black and white basic motifs were created, consisting of typography/text, or image/illustration/photo, or background. Just like in screen printing, the various layers were to be brought together.

Symbolically, this is already the first step of sharing cultural identity: that everyone has formulated their idea and vision in advance, but then mixes it with the thoughts and images of others, combines—to then also see from others how their own work moves and acquires new meanings.

Later, the creation of the publication became the last step of putting all the posters together. Besides the posters, the publication included interviews with some design heroes.

Remix (Variable Arabic Type and Specimen)

2022; Cairo, Egypt

Arabic Type Design and Editorial Design

Remix is a Fixed Width, Multi Axes, Variable Arabic Naskh Typeface that goes beyond weight and width variables. It challenges variable type limitations when it comes to Arabic script as it generates 12 variables that visualize sound. The sound visualization and forms are based on it’s frequency and amplitude following the Science of Sound and the Cymatics concept.

Remix dances to sound and can be: Regular, Bold, Black, Angular, Angular Bold, Angular Black, Baseline Regular, Baseline Bold, Baseline Black, Baseline Angular, Baseline Angular Bold, Baseline Angular Black.