JEDDAH — Four senior students at Dar Al-Hekma University won a design competition for creating a new brand identity for Tarahom, a charitable organization that supports prisoners and their families. Sara Al Saeg, Jamana Mattar, Alla Bogari and Haya Al Garny captured the essence of Tarahom with a highly creative design that connects prisoners and their family members to society through their research concept. "Dar Al-Hekma University exposes the students to as many real life situations as possible to link the theory with the practical implementation; this always enriches the learning experience and prepares them for the workforce so they can hit the ground right after graduation," said Dr. Suhair Hassan Al-Qurashi, president of Dar Al-Hekma. Tarahom approached Dar Al-Hekma University at the end of February 2015 through Ziyad Organji, managing director of InBranding and the author of Eysaam, the first Arabic book on branding. Then Tarahom sent a female representative to explain to the students the organization's services to prisoners and their families. In the presentation, the old logo and the identification system was shared with the students. The competition was to create a new brand identity for Tarahom as well as explaining the theory and concept behind the design. A reward of SR25,000 was up for grabs for the winning team. Twenty senior students of the Graphic Design Studio III course participated in the competition. The students were divided into six groups and each group submitted two entries. The students already had experience in creating a brand identity that extends reach, audience engagement and bonding with consumers from previous courses. Throughout their studies they had learned how to manage deadlines and present work to real life clients instead of faculty members. "It was a great opportunity for us to work with the students of Dar Al-Hekma University in this project, which was the first one to work with the Tarahom charitable community. It has been a really wonderful experience because we saw how excited the girls were about the project, how creative they were, and how professionally they present their ideas. We were positively surprised to see such a professional work done by the students who did not graduate yet; we might have not gotten the same quality of result elsewhere. At the end, it was a very hard task to choose the winner since each entry was unique," said Tarahom Executive Manager Abdulrahaman Al-Zaharani. The winning design will soon appear as the charity's new brand identity. The team's inspiration for the design came from three symbols — chains for security and stability, the heart as the center of humanity and mercy, and the Rubik's Cube, which represents a puzzle that needs to be solved. The aim was to help prisoners and their families solve their problems. "For the past few semesters we have been working closely with Mr. Ziyad Organji, a big supporter of Dar Al-Hekma University. His ability to connect us with organizations that need our support in rebranding has been fantastic and has provided amazing opportunities for our students to show what they are capable of," said Cordula Peters, chair for the Visual Communication Department. "The work of our students can compete with the professional designs we currently see in Jeddah, which is something we are very proud of as a university. The end result was sophisticated, well executed and showed the students dedication to creating good work."
