We asked every SYNTAXer to contribute to this e-card, according to a set of specific rules, and they only had one hour to do it. As usual we all got excited and ended up with this card,
Wishing you a joyful 2015, and prosperous times ahead.
Best
The SYNTAX Team
Business Development Coordinator
(Mid-level)
SYNTAX is seeking an organized, energetic business development coordinator.
It’s a job that combines client relationship management, project requirement gathering, research, and writing proposals.
Ideal candidates will be detail-oriented, deadline-driven, have excellent writing and oral communication skills and can work well in a team environment as well as autonomously.
Responsibilities:
• Maintain records of all business development activities, and calendar.
• Coordinate with staff and clients to schedule, organize and attend project interviews.
• Create business development plans for the future.
• Conduct lead follow-up activities, establish and maintain long-term relationships with new and existing clients.
• Gather technical and functional requirements from clients, understand their needs and prepare technical and financial proposals.
• Generate new sales leads through strategic phone call, email and follow-up methods.
• Execute client communication activities (e.g., phone, e-mail, letters) and develop appropriate support documentation under company guidelines to properly communicate company strengths and benefits to clients.
Skills/Qualifications:
• 2-5 years of relevant experience.
• Detail-oriented, highly organized and flexible.
• Very strong English writing skills, excellent communication skills and proofreading abilities.
• Strong phone presence and excellent oral communication skills.
• Strong negotiation skills and ability to lead discussion with clients and senior leadership.
• General understanding of design, marketing or media related projects.
_______________________________________________________________________
Project Coordinator
Design management is as important as design itself. Client management is more than paper pushing. Keeping us on time and on budget is as important to our success as our design and technical skills.
We’re looking for people who are passionate about design and communication as tools to change the world. If you’re happy about how the world functions today, you’d better not apply!
We want to fill several senior and junior project coordination posts at SYNTAX. It’s a job that combines client management, creative consulting, research, proposal writing and problem solving.
It all happens in a respectful, creative and multicultural work environment, working with startups, corporate clients and cultural organizations.
_______________________________________________________________________
If you think this kind of challenge is for you, we’d love to hear from you.
email us at: [email protected]
SYNTAX talks 2013 – Popularizing Arabic Cool: Jo Bedu from SYNTAX on Vimeo.
Jo Bedu is a brand that delivers modern Arab pop cultures, portrayed through different styles of creative Arab designers, illustrators, writers and artists. It is also a successful business model. The Jo Bedu team shared with us their strategy in sourcing talent across the Arab World, and how they maintain the brand as they prepare to expand their business through branches in Jordan, with an outlook to reach to wider audience via their online and wholesale channels.
Tamer AlMasri and Michael “Meesh” Makdah met in high school, and over the years their friendship culminated in a partnership that shares the goal of building a creative and fun brand experience. Although he studied computer science, Meesh’s passion truly lies in marketing. He has a natural gift with people. His positive spirit is contagious and is showcased in Jo Bedu’s great marketing track record. Tamer is an artist at heart, he pursued a degree in international affairs with a focus on political economics. However it wasn’t long before his passion for the arts realigned his goals to build a platform that celebrates the works of Arab creatives.
As part of SYNTAX/Interface, Ramzi Jaber and Joumana al Jabri present Visualizing Palestine.
An independent collective, Visualizing Palestine work at the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design, and urban studies for social justice. The team will talk about how they shifted careers from designers and engineers to social practitioners, pooling together their personal expertise in different fields to design creative visuals, which describe a factual, rights-based narrative of some of the pressing issues in Palestine/Israel.
Ramzi Jaber is a co-founder of Visualizing Palestine, and Thaber. An engineer by training, Ramzi also served as a key organizer and curator of TEDxRamallah, an independently organized TED event showcasing inspirational stories of Palestine. In 2012, he was selected as one of four Social Entrepreneurship fellows at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Joumana al Jabri is a co-founder of Visualizing Palestine. With a background in architecture and business, she works with multidisciplinary teams on projects that aim to increase social awareness by using creative communication, particularly on Palestine. She co-curated TEDxRamallah in Lebanon and is also co-founder of Febrik, a Lebanon based non-profit organization concerned with social practices and urban space, particularly within the context of Palestinian refugee camps.
As part of SYNTAX/Interface, Hussein Alazaat and Ali Almasri present Wajha.
Wajha is an independent initiative that uses design and branding knowledge gained from the business world for a better-designed social space. Interventions are created on the city’s façade; on shop-fronts to be exact. Experimenting in typography, illustration and graphic design, the Wajha duo will share their projects, which aim to stimulate the local community into talking about design through their engagement with these creative interventions.
Ali Almasri is a type and graphic designer who holds multiple degrees in graphic and industrial design. His portfolio is very diverse across branding, corporate identities, interactive media design, print, and type design. At the same time, he is interested in exploring new visual languages relating to Arabic visual culture, with a specific focus on the Arabic letter.
As a child, Hussein loved calligraphy. By the age of 10, he began to enjoy practicing his own handwriting and started to develop an individual Cubic Kufi style. Since then, Hussein has explored many artistic schools in calligraphy and typography – from classical and traditional methods to contemporary and experimental forms. He appreciates that the originality of Arabic calligraphy is an important element the Arabic culture.
The Celebration of Entrepreneurship as seen from the Wamda Live Stage
Geographically, it was one of the smaller parts of Abraaj Capital’s Celebration of Entrepreneurship, the two-day event designed to consolidate, connect and motivate the region’s entrepreneurial community. But although it only occupied a small triangular stage at the rear entrance to Dubai’s Madina Jumeirah Convention Centre, the spotlit Wamda Live Stage was perhaps the most conspicuous embodiment of the event’s spirit – and underlined the undeniable potential of Wamda.com, the site officially launched on the opening morning.
Developed, designed and delivered by SYNTAX over the previous eight months, Wamda.com combines the content capacity of a business magazine, the community functionality of a social network and the educational resources of an online university. The Wamda Live Stage, where in excess of 50 entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, government officials and SME facilitators were interviewed on camera, provided a realtime billboard for the site’s ability to capture the best regional content.
Representing several nations, a range of ages, both genders and a multitude of disciplines, the parade of guests shared their professional insights and entrepreneurial experiences in highly public interrogations that were either streamed live on Wamda.com or recorded for later uploading. The breadth of topics and the range of expertise will only add to the incredible mine of entrepreneurial stories and resources already available on the site.
Before lunch was taken on the first day, for instance, Tarek Dajani had explained the genesis and expansion of ClearTag, a Beiruti web development and consultancy firm, Pakistani Amir Anzur revealed how his first two ventures failed, the first leaving him with debts of $100,000, before his Webpreneur University finally began to take flight, and Dale Murphy from the Dubai School of Government reported on ongoing attempts to make the UAE legislation much more entrepreneur-friendly. By 6pm on the second day, we’d heard from twentysomething business owners, teenage internet prodigies, budding social entrepreneurs, senior MBA lecturers, leading internet authorities and even august officials from the US State Department. This wasn’t so much an entrepreneurial movement as a stampede.
As one of the interviewers, it was as exhausting as it was exhilarating. But it proved to be a microcosm of the Celebration of Entrepreneurship: energy, enthusiasm and excitement harnessed in bursts of engaging, enlightening discussion – and little of it encumbered by rigid orchestration or scripting. The presence of Pakistani cricketer-turned-social entrepreneur Imran Khan on the stage, and later Aramex founder Fadi Ghandour’s question and answer session with young entrepreneurs, even drew sizeable crowds, proof of the growing connection between the platform and its audience.
Ultimately, the Celebration of Entrepreneurship was about one word: possibility. Ideas turned into actions, connections created communities, meetings evolved into mentorships and principles becoming concrete policies. The Wamda Live Stage captured much of it – a spirit that Wamda.com will now take across the whole region.
The local online TV platform Aramram visited SYNTAX for a portrait of our founder, Ahmad Humeid, to cover his involvement and his views on Jordan’s internet startup scene. The clip also provides a glimpse on the office culture and the people of SYNTAX. Just in case you were wondering 🙂
WARNING: visual support only for non-Arabic speakers.
AMMAN, October 7, 2009. As the Jordanian Capital Amman celebrates 100 years since the establishment of its municipality, SYNTAX, the multidisciplinary branding and design company, has launched the full edition of the official web-site of the Centennial Celebrations of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM). The interactive website’s highlight is an invitation to all citizens of Amman to tell their part of Amman‘s story of diversity and to participate in a multitude of Centennial festivities that will be announced on the site.
An illustrated history of Amman and its municipality is presented on the site with an emphasis on the late 19th and the 20th Century, the time during which Amman grew from a small village, where the early Circassian immigrants coexisted with Arab tribes, to a new Arab town that brought together people from all over the region and that became the Hashemite choice for the capital of Jordan, and the aspiring global metropolis of today. The bi-lingual website can be found at www.ammancity100.gov.jo.
As 2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of a city administration in Amman, the Greater Amman Municipality had decided to create a web hub for the various festivities, concerts and activities that are taking place throughout this year. SYNTAX has provided GAM with a progressive web solution that enables users to upload their personal memories and stories to the website and interact with each other by discussing history, books and events in Amman. SYNTAX developed the user experience, the visual design and the content of the website. Spring Web Technologies, a sister company of SYNTAX, developed the site’s content management solution, based on open-source web technologies.
Earlier in 2009, SYNTAX had delivered to GAM the new guidelines for the Amman Brand, which SYNTAX has been working on for over a year, as the city embarked on its first comprehensive, citizen-centric branding exercise.
“Amman‘s history has mainly been told from the ancient perspective. The story of the current inhabitants which resulted in today‘s reality and diversity has mostly gone untold. Amman’s new brand is all about emphasizing the Amman that we, our parents and our grandparents built,” said Ahmad Humeid, CEO of SYNTAX.
“Emphasizing the modern history in a pluralistic narrative shows GAM‘s progressive understanding of administering the city and serving its citizens. SYNTAX assisted GAM to accomplish its vision by creating this web platform. Our work on this project reflects our understanding of the local Ammani context, which enabled us to contribute the actual content of this site,“ explained Humeid.
SYNTAX has long been a web pioneer in the Arab world and beyond, having contributed to building the region’s first online portals, corporate websites and e-commerce applications, beginning in the mid 1990s. Websites and online presences for HM Queen Rania of Jordan in 2000, followed by innovative customer centric site for telecom companies such as Fastlink (now Zain) and Jordan Telecom and, more recently, the web 2.0 career network Akhtaboot.com have established SYNTAX as one of the region’s leading web innovators. Recent web projects include the official website for the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar and a campaign site for Coca Cola Middle East.
SYNTAX has finalized the new issue of Aramex‘s customer magazine ”The Explorer“ which aims to inspire corporate leaders around the globe with outlooks on logistics and life. The ”New Frontiers“-themed issue demonstrates Aramex‘s thought leadership by attracting customers and employees for a conversational experience of Aramex‘s brand. With “The Explorer“, SYNTAX delivered an integrated branding solution including the editorial strategy, the commission of the content and the design of the entire magazine.
SYNTAX has been involved in the development of ”The Explorer“ since its inception and helped Aramex to realize its vision of moving this publication from a corporate newsletter to an engaging customer magazine. In close collaboration with Aramex‘s Marketing & PR Team, SYNTAX created the editorial concept for the magazine and supplied the entire content in cooperation with the innovative magazine publishing house Near East Media.
By developing the editorial strategy, the tone of voice and the agenda for ”The Explorer“, SYNTAX‘s team set out to create an entertaining and informative reading experience that captures the curiosity of the reader. Rather than exclusively featuring Aramex‘s activities, the magazine enlightens its audience with outlooks on various aspects of logistics and life.
”The Explorer is a showcase of how SYNTAX excels at combining communication strategy, content development and design, to deliver an engaging, informative product that is valued by readers and that concretely leads to positive brand perception,” said Ahmad Humeid, CEO of SYNTAX explains. ”This magazine explores how an innovative company like Aramex can move beyond traditional PR into engaging with customers on a deeper level,“ Humeid explains.
Developing The Explorer magazine is part or SYNTAX’s wide ranging brand, media and digital consulting activities for Aramex. For the past 18 months, SYNTAX has been working with Aramex on the articulation of its “Delivery Unlimited” brand strategy, the development of its corporate design system, launching web innovation initiatives as well as brand spin offs.
SYNTAX‘s track record in editorial design spans over more than a decade and includes branding and design projects for major regional and international publishing houses such as the Jordan Times, Abu Dhabi Media Company, United Nations, and Royal Jordanian.
The latest issue of the Explorer can be read online.
The Jordanian English language weekly The Star focuses its cover story on the centennial celebrations of Amman’s municipality and the launch of the new Amman brand that was developed by SYNTAX.
“Ahmad Humeid, the manager of Syntax, the company that designed the logo and holds the responsibility of re-branding Amman, as a city, told The Star that they have been researching Amman for the past four years. ‘There is more to what happened than a logo design. It has to be consistent and implemented as a way of life and not just a media junket,’ Humeid, who believes the new logo is more about Ammanites, said.
‘I don’t think anyone relates to the old logo that was created back in 1983. They’ve incorporated elements inspired from an Ottoman bridge on the fringes of Amman. The new logo is about Amman now…the present,’ Humeid explained.
Zeina Darwazeh, whose design that went through different stages of deliberation, re-drawing and later on public voting, said that being part of the new Amman logo was exciting. ‘Ahmad kept telling me that he wanted a timeless logo. It was a huge responsibility but I am proud that I was part of it. Compared to how it started the current logo has come a long way,’ Darwazah, the 24-year old Jordanian, talking to The Star, acknowledged.
According to Humeid between 900-1000 people voted for the present logo from the four that were exhibited at Al Hussein Cultural Center. ‘Focus groups with officials, thorough historical research and literature readings in addition to public surveys were conducted part of the new branding process,’ Humeid elaborated.
Read the full article at www.star.com.jo.
