Greater Cairo City Branding – Marwan Sameh Co

Logo Rationale

The brand is built using one of the newer trends in graphic design, dynamic brand identities. The base shape of the logo is derived from the Greater Cairo administrative map yet simplified to the basic shapes of squares.

The use of the square shape stands to signify the unity of the different cultures "in one big place". The dots used resemble the different cities within Greater Cairo, providing enough difference between cities without giving each city its distinct logo.

The essence of living in Greater Cairo is about the cultural diversity, none has the higher hand, none is more prevalent, an open museum, for culture, and a time capsule that outlives all…

Magnetically Levitating Spheres

The shape is taken from the logo creating a public artwork (professionally called placemaking). For every city there is a unique combination of spheres taken from the sub-brand of Greater Cairo and that of the specific city the space is built for.
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The spheres are magnetically levitating using a new technology that uses electromagnetic fields to levitate objects in the three X,Y and Z planes.
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The colors are taken from the brand colors (the governorate-specific color).

Placemaking & Wayfinding

The issue with greater Cairo is that it is very crowded, literally and figuratively. The streets are full of people, shops, and buildings. Cultures collide, people from various backgrounds gather around, museums of different cultures stand beside each other. Greater Cairo is a city where you’ll find Mosques, Churches, and Synagogues side by side.

A culturally neutral approach to design needed to have been taken. Modern looking without interfering with the monuments and artifacts. A sense of difference between the branding and the monuments needed to have been built.

The solution was building a culturally neutral identity, with modern elements that focus all the attention on what is happening, clearing up the crowdedness and acting as a focusing eye on what matters, each for different people.The colors are taken from the brand colors (the governorate-specific color).

Wayfinding System

GreaterCairo has multiple governorates that each cover an area of multiple cities. People commute from one city to another on daily basis. Walking around the streets of Greater Cairo was the citizens’ favorite activity at one point in time.

But as streets got more crowded, roads more confusing, walking in Greater Cairo became unpopular with newer generations.

To regain their enthusiasm, this project has focused on building a thorough wayfinding system that covers the streets of Greater Cairo, giving the pedestrians more visual queues to follow when walking around, removing the friction between finding the way and enjoying the scenery.

Greater Cairo Monument Frame

Taking the primary elements from the logo and building a frame that acts as a monument frame.

The viewer is encouraged to move around the object till reaching the position where the frame lines up with the monument creating a “camera frame”, something that is going to stay in the memory.

The frame also gives brief information about the history of the place being framed.