Talk by Samar Maakaroun

Samar Maakaroun, designer and creative director, gives a new talk in the Graphic Talks series, organized by the Graphic Elisava masters.

‘Artist, Imposter or somewhere in between?’ is based on Aristotle’s idea of becoming by doing: ‘we become just by doing just things, moderate by doing moderate things, brave by doing brave things.’ That same idea translates today in the saying ‘Fake it till you make it’. But when do we make it? How do we make it? Is making it an external or internal feeling? Does anyone ever tell us: You made it. Well done. You’ve arrived.

In this talk, Samar Maakaroun will share stories, projects, moments from her career that fall somehow between the faking and the making, and what it all comes down to.

Arab and British in equal measure, Samar Maakaroun is a designer and creative director renowned for her creatively multilingual approach to design.

Growing up in Beirut before moving to London in 2005, Samar is fluent in three languages and two cultures. Spanning 20+ years across branding, digital storytelling, scenography and typography, her career has focused on balancing aesthetics, context and heritage with brand voice and purpose.

In a globalized world with burgeoning diasporic communities in every city, Samar believes in embracing the fluidity and nuances of identity, seeing complexity as a source of creative inspiration and narrative power. Her work explores the space in-between – where cultures and languages intersect, integrate, align or diverge.

Samar founded Right to Left in 2021, a design agency that straddles cultures and typographic traditions. Specialising in designing for hybrid brands, the multidisciplinary team speaks seven languages and crosses three generations, working to fluidly integrate worlds, cultures and languages across naming, brand strategy, brands systems and identities. An example of their language-hopping, culture-crossing approach manifested in the typographic project, 29 Words for 29 Letters, which explores language, translation, and the fluidity of meaning through design.

In 2023, Samar brought her Right to Left team to Pentagram‘s London office, where she joined as one of the eleven partners.