Responses by Samar Maakaroun, partner, Pentagram.
Background: Design Doha Biennial (DDB) 2026 is the second edition of the largest platform for design in the Arab region, bringing exhibitions, public projects and collaborations to multiple sites across Doha. The Biennial aims to build networks, create opportunities and amplify the voices of designers working across disciplines, positioning Doha as a connector in the region. We were asked to create the identity for this expanded edition. Its audience spans designers, curators, collectors and institutions in the region and internationally, as well as the wider public in Doha, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the world, reading in both Arabic and English.
Design thinking: The Biennial is a constellation and meeting point where designers, curators, collectors and audiences find one another, so we designed an identity that connects just as the event does. Instead of a fixed logo, we built a flexible typographic system in which Arabic and English have equal presence and a shared DNA, composed as one unit rather than two. Extended strokes grow out of the letterforms and reach across layouts like lines joining stars, linking individual points into a larger network that is never the same twice. A palette of travertine beige, deep maroon, vivid orange and the continuing Design Doha blue grounds the system in the region, while a bolder register gives Arab Design Now its own voice within the same family.
Challenges: The first challenge was one we could not control—the regional conflict. As instability in the Middle East grew, we had to change our delivery plan, and the Biennial moved from April to November as Qatar was drawn into a conflict it did not choose. The second, one we could control, was balancing two wildly different scripts while simplifying their letterforms into a single stroke, negotiating proportion, weight and simplicity without losing recognizability. The answer was a system rather than an image, one that holds a single idea wherever it appears.
Favorite details: I am most proud of the balance we found between legibility and ownability. The Arabic word for Biennial is a phonetic translation, so while it had to be there to signal Arabic presence, recognition came from the 26 and the color blue carried over from the previous edition. This freed us to play with the letterforms. We often have to negotiate hard to create space for innovation, especially when legibility trumps distinctiveness and more traditional approaches resist distorted or exaggerated letters. However, the team at DDB was young, dynamic and very open to our suggestions, and this let us be much more playful with the work. The result was a typographic design system unique to the Biennial and representative of what the event is trying to do: connect people and celebrate design from east to west.
New lessons: My team is made up of multilingual designers, some Arabic speakers and some not, and this project reminded me how valuable that mix is. Designers who don’t read the script are free of the weight of knowing; they see the letterforms purely as form. That can create errors and accidents, some of which we refine into something innovative and distinctive. My team explores the shapes, and I later move diacritics or adjust proportions to bring it all together, editing out what is incorrect and keeping what surprises us. I love moving between not knowing and knowing: exploring freely at first, then bringing the forms into focus. On every project., we discover new ways to treat letterforms, and Design Doha Biennial was no exception. It never gets dull.
Specific project demands: The biggest demand was resizing the logo across very different formats, from landscape to vertical, while keeping the constellation concept visible. The extensions had to follow each format, stretching to fill the space without losing the lines that define the identity. That could have made the project far harder, but today’s technology makes it easier to build tools that manipulate letterforms quickly, rather than creating every iteration by hand. What could have been a burden became one of the system’s strengths.
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