Yasmine Nachabe Taan interviews American-Lebanese illustrator and designer Sarah Saroufim. They start the conversation by taking us through her educational journey first in graphic design at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and how this led to her interest in illustration; then to her postgraduate studies in product design at Parsons School of Design in New York.
Sarah discusses candidly her interests, struggles and doubts. She shares the fact that she has been interested in art and passionate about drawing since high school, but not until the end of her college years did she finally feel better at it and found her own voice in illustration. She discusses her creative process and how she needs the time to experiment and plan extensively before starting her drawings. She also discusses the dot-pattern illustrations and Arabic lettering that she created for a book published by Snoubar Bayrout Bookshop, entitled Dammeh [hug], among other meaningful projects she enjoyed working on. She elaborates on her mainly black and white color palette, and her fascination with drawing patterns using her ballpoint pen that she always carried with her. Recently she started integrating grays, and other vivid colors in her design work. She mentions a course she took at AUB with Lebanese graphic artist and illustrator, Mazen Kerbaj, from which she learned the importance of drawing every day (though she fails to apply this), as well as the importance of drawing every detail from scratch no matter how often it may be repeated in a composition. In her work she takes the hard way in order to feel that the outcome is of any worth.
Sarah discusses the economic reasons behind her switching from being a freelance illustrator to working in a design agency on full-time basis. Her studying product design was in the same vein: namely her need to learn something different and practical that she can earn money through. To compensate for her struggle with ideas and the discipline of drawing every day, she designed an app called Drop for the iPad about daily drawing for her capstone project at Parsons. She shares her disillusionment with AI developments and the way the world is becoming less authentic. She reveals the very personal motivation behind her work and its importance for her wellbeing, and concludes by saying: "No matter how low or insecure you may be feeling, just draw, it's possible to improve and change."
Sarah Saroufim is one the visual artists and graphic women featured in the book, Revealing Recording Reflecting: Graphic Women from Southwest Asia and North Africa (Amsterdam: Khatt Books, 2024).
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