by Herman Manson (@marklives) Identical twins Mohamed and Haitham El-seht are the Egyptian cartoonists driving the Arabic-comics collective behind Garage — a comic magazine released in late 2015. They are also speaking at Design Indaba 2016, 17–19 February in Cape Town. We caught up with them to find out how their cartoons engage with brands and products. Find their portfolio on Behance and Deviant Art.
As cartoonists, how do you decide what is appropriate when you work brands into your cartoons?
[Doing] work for art [covering a] general topic is more easy than making art for [a] brand; [a] brand comes with its own slogan, own goal and own value[s]. So we know that [the] best way to make [the] difficult equation between creative art and brand value — it’s like geometric theory: you put all [the] elements together from your experience in [the] art field, [and the] market which this brand target[s] and [the] balance between them, if you make [80%] of all these elements semi-equal, you do it [the] perfect way as [an] artist .
What will your Design Indaba talk focus on?
For us, [the] Design indaba conference is [a] new challenge, especially when this challenge come[s] from Africa, our land, [in] which we belong. We are comic and creative artists, so anyone [who] see[s] this title of [ours] will recognise that we will talk about art. Sure, it will happen. But art, not just drawing skills, [as well as] history, lifestyle [and] social life — we will have all these sides and more in our [speech].
How would you describe your style?
As Picasso said, every artist [doesn’t] have his own style from nothingness; we are, as [with] any human [being], influence[d] by [the] surround[ing] environment. But what [is] different [between] artist and normal people [is] that [the artist[‘s] eye catch[es] everything around him [through a] different point of view. So our style [is] more into [the] social, deep [full? heavily into?] people[’s] facial expressions , which show[s] [their] culture. But, from [an] art point of view, [the] French style is close[r] for us than [the] American one, which [is] base[d] on science fiction and fairy tales.
What are the challenges of and opportunities for cartoonists working in the Arab world?
[The] Arab world is theatre for a lot of events, although we don’t have [the] best environment that help[s] artist[s] to create and innovate. But we are lucky, [in that] these events could give us more references for our art projects. We can say [that], after [the] Egyptian revolution of 2011, young artists opened new way[s] for [the] field — small projects , new startups and many art workshops — [the] world heard about new artists from [the Arab world who are creative and who have new passion. This was clear for us when we [became] co-founders of [the] Cairo Comix International Festival last year (2015).
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com. He was the inaugural Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year in 2011 and has, over his 20-year-plus career, contributed to numerous journals and websites in South Africa and abroad, including AdVantage magazine, Men’s Health, Computer World and African Communications.
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