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Someone in the office is selling a brand new, still in the box wrapped in plastic 60GB iPod photo for KD180. Interested? Then leave a comment.

You might be a syrian in lebanon if

10. you spent the last two months hiding in ‘jall mowz ‘ on the outskirts of saida

9. you hang out at the termoss unemployment line with 5000 other guys like you

8. the market for skekeen matbakh in dbayyeh burst like the internet bubble in 2001

7. the syrian you were watching who was watching a lebnese was sent back home

6. you’ve spent the last couple of months training to say “keefak “and “mish heyk?”

5. the last time you remember being so scared, you were still in syria

4. you painted your yellow chevrolet 1956 taxi “cedar green”

3. you get free bus rides from homs to beirut if you agree to carry a lebanese flag

2. the big wasta you had from your sisters husband from korda7a who is a colonel in the syrian airforce is only good to get you a seat on a bus back to sham

1. the last time you earned money was when you showed up at Hizballahs PROSYRIA demonstration in beirut

By Naycola

Burger King is reportedly set to unveil a large new breakfast sandwich that bets not everyone is looking to watch their diet.

USA Today reports that the No. 2 fast food chain is set to debut its Enormous Omelet Sandwich Monday. The sandwich will have one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon, according to the paper.

That works out to 730 calories and 47 grams of fat, according to the report. While the sandwich goes against the trend at some competitors to offer healthier fare, some analysts said that the new sandwich is likely to be a sales success. That’s more than the company’s Whopper burger, which the Burger King Web site said has 700 calories and 42 grams of fat.

“The critics will still label it food porn,” says Sherri Daye Scott, editor at QSR, a fast-food industry trade magazine told the paper. “But the average male fast-food customer does not have a problem with this.”

The new offering could also make Burger King more of a player in the breakfast market, where USA Today reports it seriously lags behind McDonald’s (Research).

Burger King has been privately held since it was sold by British food conglomerate Diageo to a group led by Texas Pacific Group in 2002.

Have you guys seen the knew BKME logo? Its depressing. How can a bank like BKME be so stupid I don’t know. I don’t blame the designer. The designer is crap, I am sure he knows that already. I blame the people at BKME who accepted such tragic work. My god, its a disaster! Firstly, before I start talking about the logo, lets talk about the 4×3 Mega’s on the road where the logo is on. You DO NOT use yellow type on a white background. Its very unreadable. They not only used yellow type on a white background, they used it on their outdoor ads!! If you are driving up to the ad on the street you will not see “Al Awsat” written in yellow until you slam into the ad. Its impossible to read when its in a newspaper yet alone an ad on the street 50 meters away while you are zooming buy in you car at 100km/h. Thats their first mistake. Lets talk about the logo. Is that a pearl? Come on, who was the genius who thought of that? Very creative. I am sure no one ever thought about it before (Note: I am being sarcastic here). Even Gulf Bank uses the pearl for their Dana account. Anyway, whatever, fine, go with the pearl, but at-least be a bit more creative about it. It looks like a shop that sells marbles for kids. Their logo really pisses me off.

You know what the problem is? People think being a designer is easy. People think anyone can be a designer. People think that if they take a course in Adobe Photoshop at some trashy institute in Salmiya they automatically are designers. Thats bullshit. If thats true then what did I do for 4 years at university? Why do designers go get their masters then their PhDs? Taking a course in Photoshop at an institute just means you now know how to use 5% of Photoshops capabilities. Thats all. We spend the first two years of university not being allowed to use any computers in our design work. They teach us that the computer is just a tool, its just a means to get what you have in your head onto paper. Thats all. So they spend the first 2 years teaching us about other tools like drawing, painting, silk screen printing, sculpturing, stencils and tons more stuff. Not only that but as a designer you need to be creative, and have taste, both things which many people lack. Why is GianFranco Ferre designing clothes and you aren’t? Why is Philip Starck designing everything from hotel rooms to sneakers and you aren’t? They got it you don’t, its that simple.

Anyway it doesn’t matter. BKME is the one losing here. The new Osoul logo even has a readability problem. Osoul in arabic can be read as Osoul or Osoud. The reason for that is the L in the end is not shaped correctly. The L could look like an L or a D. It goes both ways. Fine the majority will read it as an L but the fact that it might be read as a D is a problem. Now the logo is out and I am sure Osoul is getting comments about it. It could have been so easy to fix but it wasn’t. Below is just a mockup I did in 2 minutes of what could have been done to avoid this Osoul/Osoud mix up.

Osoul Logo

Osoul Logo Fixed

But anyway this post has become to long so I will stop. Its just very frustrating for me because these bad designers give us all a bad reputation and image. The client needs to be able to trust us and bad designers make this trust harder to form.

David Duchovny
Rob Zombie

Celebrity Blogs Part 1

I actually started 2:48AM so I can post pictures that didn’t make the cut on Miskan.com. This picture is from yesterday but I decided to go with the visually more attractive Caution sign. This fire is from near my house. A garbadge bin was set on fire and there were 2 cops standing near it waiting for the fire trucks to come. One of the cops saw me take a picture and called me over. When I went to him he asked me if I was a journalist. I told him no. He was like why are you taking a picture? I told him because its something interesting. I asked him if fire trucks were gonna come, he replied saying they were. Then he asked me if I want to take a picture of them. I told him I couldn’t since I had to leave. I said thank you and left. [large pic link]

Found these photos of Mariah Carey, never knew she was this hot. Britney Spears has gone ugly while Mariah Carey has become pretty. I am fine with that. [Link]

Ok, so I am at the barber today getting a haircut and shave, when he tells me his wife back home just had a baby.

Sounds normal right? Yes, except for the fact that my barber just came back from his vacation 2 months ago. His vacation was for 3 months. 2 + 3 is 5. Say my dates are wrong, say he has been here for 3 months now and his vacation was 4 months which isn’t true but lets go with that. Thats still 7 months and last I heard it still takes 9 months to get a baby.

Strange.

I had Hardee’s for lunch today. I had a Big Champ combo and the Turkey & Swiss sandwich. The Turkey & Swiss was decent, nothing special. The Big Champ today thought was awful. I don’t know how they messed it up but it tasted terrible and I just couldn’t finish it. Last time I will have the Big Champ again. Will stick to the regular mushroom & swiss next time.

My favorite orange drink since highschool has been Sunkist. I started drinking it back in highschool because it was cheap at only 50fils. Since then, Sunkist has become the only orange juice I drink. For some reason though I always thought Sunkist was a 100% local product. But just now I was reading the label and it said “Under license from Sunkist Growers Inc; USA”. So I googled Sunkist and quickly found www.sunkist.com. Then I found this which I found funny:

Sunkist products have a long history in several Persian Gulf States. Besides being a major juice brand, Sunkist is the market leader in juice drink cups in the Kuwaiti market.

Ofcourse they are gonna be the market leader, their are no other juice drink cups in the market! hehe, anyway, Sunkist still rules!

I think my Sony Ericsson T630 is dying. This past week while talking to people on my phone I was hearing crackling sounds. Yesterday while talking to Nibaq he told me he was also hearing the crackling sounds on his side. So yesterday night I went into the “Service Tests” menu (From main screen press > * < < * < *) and I did the mic test and as I had expected all I was hearing was the crackling sound. Seems the mic on the phone is fucked. Now I don't know what to do. I am soo bored of all the phones in the market. I don't like Nokia, I hate the samsung brand, siemens are interesting but the phones they have which I like don't have bluetooth. Motorolla also have interesting phones but even the ones with bluetooth don't work with my mac and pda the way they should. So that leaves Sony Ericsson. My past 4 or 5 phones were all Sony Ericssons. They work best with my Mac (isync) which is the most important thing I look for in a phone. But there is no SE phone that interests me now. The S700 is cool but big and expensive. The P series I dislike because of their Symbian Os. That leaves me with the K700, which is probably what I will go with. I think I should be able to find it for a decent price now. If it turns out to be more then what I want to pay I will definitely find a second hand like new condition one for a lot cheaper. I am so bored with phones...

They didn’t get the new toys, they still had only Chewbacca and Star Wars Falcon toy so I had a Big Fish meal.

The other day I mentioned a design agency called Landor and today I am gonna mention another great agency called Interbrand. Everyone knows that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and Van Gogh painted the Starry Night, but very few people know which agency created the Vodafone logo, yet alone which designer was behind it. Designers are not as appreciated as painters although both are creatives. Creating a brand identity I believe is harder then creating a painting. When artists paint they paint for themselves. Their painting in the end will be purchased by 1 person who might be the only one likes the painting. On the other hand a designer creating a brand identity has a lot more pressure and a much much more difficult aim. When a designer creates a brand its not just for himself, its for everyone. It will be seen by thousands and millions of people and it will become part of peoples daily life. Brands are not locked up away in some museum where viewers trickle in one at a time to see it. Brands are let out into the wild where millions and millions of people will interact with it.

Interbrand have created identities for some of our favorite brands ranging from Imation, Nikon, and Lufthansa to British Airways, 3com and Lexmark. My favorite is Petro-Canada.

For some samples of logo’s they have designed click here
For the agencies website and portfolio click here

I met with Nibaq awhile ago for lunch. He had been walking around Muthana complex trying to kill time until it was time for me to have lunch. While walking around he found a new Apple store that was still being worked on. The place is called Solize and is not connected to any of the other local dealers. We spoke to the guy incharge who was busy displaying mac hardware and he seemed like a nice person ALTHOUGH when Nibaq asked him if he supplied RAM for the powerbooks the guy asked is it Apple? Like duh… Anyway the store had two cool things. First they had second hand macs for sale although not cheap. One was a Graphite G4 500mhz powermac for 300KD. The second was a Dual 800mhz Quicksilver powermac for around 430KD. He also told me he had a Dual 1GHZ mirrored door powermac inside, but I didn’t see it nor did I ask its price. Another good thing he had although once again not cheap was Sonnet Encore CPU upgrades for older powermacs. A G4 1.4ghz upgrade would set you back 190KD at solize compared to the 450$ on amazon. The store will be completed within a week. I personally think this store will NOT succeed due to the terrible location. Its in Muthana Complex, Mezzanine 1, right in the back behind Steps and near the Asus and As Seen on TV dealers. Impossible to find and even if it was located at the main entrance, I doubt the people who frequent Muthana are potential Apple users..

Here are some pictures I took

Remember the BumFights DVD I bought the other day off the street kid? Well turns out it came with a bonus. The DVD is actually 2 DVDs in 1! The DVD had BumFights AND World’s Wildest Street Fights Vol2. I watched a bit of BumFights but then went straight to World’s Wildest Street Fights and it was amazing! WWSF is 45 minutes of non stop videos of people fighting. Could be schools kids beating the fuck out of each other or two girls fighting at a BBQ party. Really amazing stuff, its all home made movies recorded by people at the fights. Very violent and interesting to watch, I loved it. I just wish it was much longer, 45 minutes flew by very quickly.