The Project

 The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, one of the world’s leading literary festivals, brings together authors, readers, and thinkers from across the globe.
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I led the creative direction of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2022, overseeing the global launch at Expo 2020 Dubai beneath the Al Wasl Dome and delivering a multi-channel campaign that reached thousands of readers across the UAE and beyond.

Introducing the theme “Here Comes the Sun,” the campaign reflected a moment of renewal after the pandemic, celebrating literature as a source of hope, imagination, and new beginnings.

Key Visual

Echoing the festival theme Here Comes the Sun, I developed the key visual as a paper-cut style illustration of Dubai. The layered paper aesthetic referenced the pages of a book, bringing a tactile sense of literature into a campaign largely experienced through digital screens.

Creative Execution

Print Campaign Assets

Digital Venue Branding

Live Stage Experience

Key Visual

For the Festival’s sub-brand Fright Night, I reimagined the main key visual with a darker, more atmospheric nighttime mood while retaining the distinctive Dubai skyline. Cooler tones and dramatic shadows transformed the familiar cityscape into a playful setting for mystery and storytelling.

Creative Execution

Arabic Campaign Artwork

Digital Venue Branding

Live Stage Experience

Campaign System

To support the Festival’s extensive programme, I developed a flexible digital campaign system that maintained a consistent visual identity across the wide range of sessions and authors in the programme.

The system allowed each author’s work to take centre stage while preserving the overall look and feel of the campaign.

Festival Storytelling

Since 2018, I have overseen the creative direction of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature’s annual highlights videos, developing the briefs and storyboards that shape how each edition of the Festival is documented and shared with audiences.
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For the 2022 Festival, the highlights video captured a moment of cultural return as the world began emerging from the pandemic. Drawing on soundbites from author talks, poetry and spoken word performances, and interviews conducted by the Festival team, the film weaves together a narrative that reflects the renewed energy of audiences returning to literary gatherings — and the enduring role festivals like this play in bringing readers, writers, and ideas together.

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This work was developed as part of my role at the Emirates Literature Foundation.
​All project materials are presented here for portfolio purposes to reflect my personal contribution to the campaign.