Ghada Wali

Florence, Italy

Award-winning Egyptian Artist, Illustrator, Art director and Graphic designer currently working on scholarship MA degree in Graphic Design in Florence, Italy. Worked as a team-leader at MI7 Egypt; a leading local Advertising agency working with several multinational brands. Where I worked on creation, development & management of 360 advertising campaigns from brief to production. I have developed strong leadership skills, and know how to interact with a wide variety of other people while working several different jobs. I also had the experience of working in multinational agencies such as J.Walter Thompson (JWT) and Fortune Promoseven (FP7). Besides my full-time work in the agency, I took the vow to contribute to the building of the future Graphic Design in Cairo where I also worked as Graphic Design Tutor in both the American University in Cairo and the German University in Cairo. Tutoring has taught me to work diplomatically and successfully with a wide variety of students.

Being the highest honors graduate of the first class of the new established Graphic design program in the German University in Cairo, puts me as one of the pioneers in Graphic design throughout my country. Ofcourse it was a great challenge to join a program happening for the first time in Egypt, but I insisted in marking my first steps in my journey for solely believing how can Graphic design change the world.

Since “seeing is believing” I am always keen to to attend various design workshops that teach diverse angles of utilizing my Graphic Design skills in Academic, Commercial & Artistic outputs including:
1) Branding & Corporate Identity : I have worked on market leader brands, creating both brand guidelines & developing campaigns that where launched all over Egypt, resulting in remarkable increase in their sales.
2) Bilingual design: I put in action the spark off January 25 revolution in the bilingual exhibition in Zurich, F+F Schule Fur Kunst Und Mediendesign.
3) Arabic Typography: I successfully designed my own Arabic type face published in the book: an illustrated guidebook on arabic type design by Huda Smitshuijzen Abifarès. Lets play - project chosen as best 100 graphic design pieces in the world by The Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago.
4) Political Awarness: I was invited to exhibit 3 of my projects in 2 exhibitions in London :“In the City” & “The censored”.
5) Social Awarness: My project “Meen Homma” has went as viral online campaign in the Arab Region on social media platforms as well as online magazines as well as Local newspapers.

I always intended for reaching out to diverse designers-coming from different design schools and cultural backgrounds- while attending international design conferences in the cosmopolitan city of Dubai, Istanbul, Milan, London, Berlin, Barcelona and Zurich. All these experiences have been of a great learning which solidified my creative, design, -and illustrative skills. Travel has played a large role in shaping my view of others and of cultural differences.

I found myself able to encompass the Egyptian flavor through portraying my work on the maps of global trends. “New, innovative, culturally driven, originally imprinted, clear, interactive, functional, emotional, conceptual, a signature, a treasure” this is how I keep my work tied to those concepts. In addition, My independent research projects have strengthened my skills in laboratory work and developed in me an eye for details.