Focusing on Libya's Hidden & Neglected Landmarks and Diverse Culture: Meet the Graphic Designer Ziad Alhemdi

Ziad Alhemdi is a biomedical engineer and a freelance graphic designer, visual artist, and civic society activist. He has been a member in H2O organization since 2012 and now is considered a distinguished member. He worked as the media manager for the organization for over 4 years and now he is consultant for new members. He is also a member in  WaraQWaraQ Art Foundation and managed to participate in exhibitions held inside and outside Libya through this organization. He has huge interest, if not passion, with Libya's history.  

His work as a graphic designer was first a hobby. In the beginning of 2011, when the revolution just started, people wanted to participate and help in any way possible and art was part of the fight back then. Artists of every form participated with their work from Graffiti to music to visual art. Their work became part of the social change the country was going through alongside the political change in which we can still observe in Libya today, almost 10 years after liberation.  During that time, Ziad was based in Misrata city so he participated with graphic pieces and was the art director in Al-Sada'a Newspaper. 

While working in H2O, he was responsible to design any visual work required for any project such as campaigns logos. In a project called ''What do youth want in the constitution? ماذا يريد الشباب في الدستور؟, he was responsible for the visual content of this project which had a huge expand within the Libyan society due to its importance since Libya ''was'' in the process of drafting the constitution and youth were and are still an integral variable of this process. 

The concept of this project was to visit over 60 cities and villages in all over Libya and they had to survey people from every place to know what youth want and that trip exposed Ziad and gave him the chance to see Libya from a totally different or unique lens as I would like to describe it. An opportunity to experiment with the richness of Libya's culture and the multiplicity of it. He witnessed the diversity and cohesion of the multiple layers of this net and that later on, ignited his curiosity to find out more and he ended up coming up with the ''Libyan Landmarks'' series (سلسلة معالم ليبية). 

Libyan Landmarks Visual Series is considered a highlight in the Libyan graphics scene and it made a huge success in and out of Libya when Ziad launched the first designs. It is a series that has Libya's diverse and hidden landmarks in beautiful designs with description written in many languages such as Arabic, English, French, Italian, and Tamazight. However, the story is bigger and it is as interesting as the designs. Ziad told me that in the beginning of the project, he didn't have the idea of having multiple designs. 

Libya's registered landmark at the UNESCO

Actually, the idea was mainly to focus on the least famous and unknown landmarks. Usually when we think of landmarks around the world, we will only think of a single landmark when, in fact, there are many that are worth documenting. For example, Tripoli is well-known for the Red Castle (Assaraya Alhambra) located downtown Tripoli in Martyrs square but is it really the only landmark in this city? of course not and Ziad embarked the journey of revealing other landmarks in the capital and also in other cities around Libya. In addition, he is working on releasing five designs of five landmarks registered at the UNESCO as a cultural heritage in Libya. 

The initial designs had no description when they were released but people were ecstatic about them and encouraged him to design other landmarks from other cities. Therefore, the second batch of the designs included description. The concept Ziad had was to let people familiar with Libya's landmarks and learn about the history behind them. When he was in H2O organization, the majority of members were architects and one of the founding members, Mr. Haidar Dawi, informed Ziad on the stories behind old buildings downtown Tripoli every time they went out and Ziad would look up for more information online and any supporting documents and published papers, if available of course. 

Throughout this interesting interview, I asked Ziad about his favourite designs and he told me that there are three designs that are dear to him and these are Galleria di Aurora in Tripoli, Marble Arch, also Arch of the Philaeni in Ras Lanuf, and Benghazi's Cathedral. Ziad said that not many people know this but Benghazi's Cathedral is the biggest cathedral in North Africa. Again, the main target is to focus on neglected landmarks to be preserved and to save what's left, especially, the architectural history.  

Speaking to Ziad about Libya's history, I could highly resonate on a point that what he is doing is in a way to fill a gap he has had growing up regarding Libya's history. It is the same to me personally when I decided to focus on Libya's history in my articles and I think he is helping many other Libyans to fill this gap as well. Unfortunately, the educational system didn't have Libya included, thus, that created and widened the gap as students would learn Islamic history and the ottomans and a bit of the Italian colonization without having traces of Libya's diverse history. In addition, as he travelled and met foreigners, he noticed that sometimes they would know more about our country than us and this added to the motivation he already has and to also highlight the diversity we have.

Of course, this does not mean that this journey was completely smooth all the way through, in fact, he encountered many challenges especially in collecting information. Some of the designs he released did not have description because no data was available. Also, if information is available in Libya, for example, archives and documents at Al-Jihad Centre or Assaraya Alhambra museum, accessibility is almost impossible. Ziad urges the need for institutional proactivity and support to revive the available resources and preserve the already existing archives and also to provide easy access to them especially to researchers and locals who search for answers. 

Check his page on Instagram: ziad_alhemdi
And Facebook on: ZAlhemdi