Zanoubia is a hypothetical project for a luxury shop that aims to sell Arabic soap and other beauty products. It breaks away from the other existing representations employed by the Arabic soap shops which relate the soap to orientalism. The visual identity is inspired by the different shapes of Arabic soap and its method of production, which consists in stacking the soap on top of each other to dry. Zanoubia brings a new approach and concept to how to design the packaging and visual identity of the soap. It has a modern approach in its design and still shows the traditional aspect related to this tradition. The display was inspired by the different Arabic soap shapes that exist. Moreover, I wanted to challenge the idea of ‘display’ through creating a display that could be changed from time to time. I worked it in a way that each shape is independent from the other so that it could be rebuilt over and over again in order to get different visuals.

[May 2013]