Story ~ Fatenn Mostafa is a veteran marketeer and a internationally celebrated art curator in Cairo, Egypt. She has observed that even though there are reputable galleries in the Middle-East & North Africa, there is not one which the world looks at, as 'the' destination for art from the Middle-East & North Africa. She aspired to create such a gallery. For this, she first had to create a strategy that would guide her vision and evolve a unique name and identity to support this strategy. Strategically she realises that being a new gallery it would be difficult to become 'the' destination for art in the Middle-East & North Africa overnight. So she decided to literally render the gallery as a destination. The acronym CAI was born. CAI stood for Cairo Art initiative. It was a contemporary way how the travel industry referred to Cairo - CAI. At airports, on tickets on websites, people were continuously drilled with CAI. This is something people subconsciously had ingrained on their minds. At least people that had anything to do with the Middle East, North Africa and Cairo knew what CAI stood for. Making CAI representative of a art gallery by default implied it as a destination. CAI was a contemporary and subconscious way of imprinting people's minds that Cairo Art Initiative was a destination. Doing so right in it’s identity tied in the objective closely with the brand making it inseparable. The 50% left now was a contemporary visual rendition. She did not want to use the cliché airport ticker board so she researched further and decided to use an age old way or marking destinations. With a 'X'. The result was bold and memorable symbol. Scenario To create a unique name and identity for a new art gallery in Cairo. Fatenn Mostafa, is a veteran marketeer and a internationally celebrated art curator in Cairo, Egypt. When the revolution hit Egypt, She approached us because she wanted to start a new art gallery in Cairo. It was a fantastic opportunity given that we had to create a story from scratch, even the name wasn't decided. Cairo and the Middle East are home to a number of established at galleries. Some even represented globally. To create an identity which could sit comfortably amongst global names was quite intimidating. Also, coming up with the name and identity itself, which actually did justice to the strategy and looked contemporary enough to be placed comfortably next to a big name and be aspired to. Everyone will agree, that guiding a organisation's vision, mission and purpose is a daunting responsibility. Fatenn had asked us to do precisely this. We knew that, while we would guide the whole project to fruition, the seed of all the aspects of the gallery's identity had to originate from Fatenn. We would have to understand everything from her. The motivation behind her wanting to start a gallery, the objective she wanted to achieve by doing so, how would it add values to peoples' lives, and everything everything there was to understand. It was the only way, Fatenn would associate with the identity and believe in it; because it would come from her. We later realised that this is exactly what she was expecting from us. Strategy We discovered that even though there were many reputable galleries in the region, there was not one gallery which was seen as 'the' gallery. Fatenn wanted to literally make this gallery 'the' destination for art in the Middle East & North Africa. This is where we started. We decided to make 'a claim' the core foundation for our strategy for the brand. Being a new gallery and wanting to be recognised as a leading gallery was not going to happen overnight, one would have to work years to do this, and no other gallery was making this claim. We could. This claim would potentially garner attention faster if stated bluntly. Doing this would also guide what the gallery would need to do to fulfil this claim. Of course this would imply that Fatenn would have to deliver on the claim, and she was quite confident that she could. Especially with the gallery space that she had showed us. It was delightful. So we built everything on this. Before the launch she also entrusted us with creating the virtual presence for the gallery. Given the initial stage and the resources available with CAI to maintain the online presence, we decided to keep it simple. We managed to build on our visual identity and maintain the overall visual integrity. Music Credits: Track: I burn like (Original) Feat. Darren Murray. © Stelios Vassiloudis. Athens, Greece. (https://www.facebook.com/steliosvassiloudisofficial) Disclaimer: This video is for the purposes of concept presentation only. All logos, trademarks, photographs or sound used in this presentation are owned solely by the respective owners and KG does not claim nor has any rights on either of these properties. KG only owns full rights to the design and strategy of the concept portrayed in this video.

• published: 25 Sep 2012
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