I am truly tired of a corporate culture that believes in stringing along vendors for payments. I design for a prominent group in Karachi, and in the six months of my agreement with them, getting payment for my and third-party services has been like pulling teeth.
This is the scenario: I get calls every day pressuring […]
Corporate Double Standards
Who’s designing your site?
Web Development companies in Pakistan are like grains of sand on the beach – innumerable. As a way to make a quick buck, to start up a company without overhead, and to succeed at it, web development tops the charts of most desirable career. Not to be confused with Web Design, web developers are the […]
The 6th KaraFilm Festival
And now for something positive out of Pakistan… There are people in this country who are working to improve the status quo, in all sectors, from all walks of life. The organizers of the KaraFilm Festival (Karachi International Film Festival) fall in this category. Having designed for them for the past two years, I have […]
No Shame in Deceit?
I went to see my mother’s aunt over Eid – a frail, tiny woman, over a hundred years old by my estimate, but spritely and alert in her old age – and we inevitably talked about days gone by, and her memories of her brother (my grandfather). Her son, sitting next to her, was counting […]
The Non-Pakistani Pakistani
Pakistan’s elite might be considered the counter balance to the extremism that lives here: a minute percentage of the population that is educated and monied, urbanized off-spring of wealthy feudal landowners, an enterprising Upper Middle Class of mostly migrant muslims from India, and some expatriates who are returning to Pakistan and bringing a glimpse of […]
The Wider World
Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo (The drop excavates the stone, not with force but by falling often) - Ovid
As children, everything is new for us, and our observational skills develop, or retard, according to the level of curiosity we are allowed to display. Parents with social strictures, rules of etiquette and the […]
Blue Chip
By giving myself a profession, designer, I think I have made the mistake of falling victim to my own press. This title now is who I am, not a facet of my personality, but my whole personality.
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Design’s Conflict Zone
I spend some time every day surfing other designers’ portfolios, looking, more importantly, for the roots of their inspiration for each piece. I vividly remember one site where the designer placed photographs of random places (a public crossing painted on the road) next to a finished design piece, showing the root of his inspiration, and […]
Weblogs and Mainstream Media on the Israel/Lebanon War
For much of the Israeli war against Lebanon, mainstream media painstakingly avoided laying blame where it so squarely lay: at Israel’s door. In fact, many organizations pointed out discrepancies in their (the media’s) insistence that the conflict was sparked by Hezbollah, when in fact, the Israel Occupation Forces had violated the Blue Line over 11,000 […]
Celebrating Life in a Shopping Cart
Karachi, Pakistan - Summer 2006
The bilboards were supposed to have come down by now. Instead, we’re celebrating life in a shopping cart, in big letters on a green field, and amir’s filling his shopping cart with giant TV’s and telling us this is how to earn spiritual freedom. Doesn’t this offend anyone? 30 new channels […]