Qirtas Shop_Zine Salone

For London Design Festival 2022, Qirtas, a Bahraini-based stationery and concept store brings to life it’s pop-up space in Shoreditch, creating a physical personification of its core belief_the drama of putting pen to paper. Qirtas activates it’s experiential retail space in Shoreditch by hosting a Zine Salone, whereby customers and visitors alike create their own zines with the aid of a variety of block prints – handmade by Qirtas’ team of designers – to design and personalize their zine. A zine is a self-published and non-commercial print work, usually as a means of self-expression. Participants are encouraged to highlight simple yet significant aspects of a potential, pending or existing venture and design a single zine representing these aspects in a bit-size manner. The by-product of this activation is to enliven and kickstart projects and ventures participants may be reluctant to move forward with, and present it via a digestible and actionable tool. “We can all get equally excited and intimidated at the sight of a blank paper. The feeling of intimidation can be intensified when pairing a blank paper with planning a new venture or project.” Through the Zine Salone, the Qirtas team aims to break these barriers, and replace intimidation with a flow of ideas. In an inevitably digitized approach our current times has, to both planning and designing, Qirtas resurfaces the basics of putting pen to paper to allow participants to surpass the intimidation of “staring at a blank page”. As visual beings, it is important that our tools are both informative and visually appealing. Taking inspiration from both Qirtas’ rooted Bahraini culture, and the location of its pop-up in Shoreditch, East London, Qirtas’ design team carved a set of block prints in which participants can use to design their publication. A mishmash of all these elements are brought together in a single platform to create an enabling tool [the zine]_ a supercharger for creativity. Through experimentation with product, space and materials, Qirtas manifests a culture of play. In Shoreditch Design District, the brand experiments with reflective and chromatic materials to dramatize visitors reflections, pushing them to perceive the imaginative versions of their ideas and potential alike. Materials selected for the design reflect distortions, exaggerated angles and perspectives, allowing the space for visitors to imagine their ideas in the same manner. “We want our customers to feel a sense of relatedness and ownership to the tools that translate their ideas into tangible means. The tools that become the bearers of their ideas, thoughts, and plans” says Sara Abdulla, Co-Founder of Qirtas. Qirtas pushes the boundaries of relevance of stationery. Stationery is not just for the creative. Through the Zine Salone, Qirtas extends the boundaries of stationery by creating a deeper connection with its visitors, and further extend the experience of its pop-up. “ Join the muse. Join the drama”