{"id":460675,"date":"2026-06-04T13:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/460675\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T13:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:33:09","slug":"james-stuart-is-railing-against-boring-design-with-techniques-inspired-by-the-spirit-of-arabic-hardcore-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/460675\/","title":{"rendered":"James Stuart is railing against boring design with techniques inspired by the spirit of Arabic hardcore music"},"content":{"rendered":"

When graphic designer James Stuart<\/a> isn\u2019t kicking out the jams in Arabic-language punk band Haram<\/a>, he\u2019s managing a \u201csomewhat incongruous balance between designing artwork for musicians\u201d and making documentary films. When a life in making non-fiction films called to him ten years ago, he still kept one foot in his design career. \u201cNow I just do both. Well, I do three things. I am a musician first. Much of the work on my site is artwork created for the records I\u2019ve made,\u201d says James, the design polymath behind these striking pieces of album art, record sleeves and posters, filled with punk spirit.<\/p>\n

Rooted in the strong visual heritage of the Arabic language, his work references everything from emerging indie rock cultures such as Taqwacore (a portmanteau of \u2018hardcore\u2019 and the Arabic word \u2018taqwa\u2019 \u062a\u0642\u0648\u0649, which is usually translated as \u2018piety\u2019 or the quality of being \u2018God-fearing\u2019), zoomorphic calligraphy and illustrations of animals that merge the penmanship of writing with the craft of drawing.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, the visual accompaniment to a given piece of music benefits from a rigorous rule-set, or notion of the guidelines within which a visual response must reside. Because my work utilises typography, photography, model making, filmmaking and illustration, I really struggle to forge a coherent response without any creative or conceptual limitations,\u201d says James. \u201cWith all of that being said, sometimes I choose to throw all of that out the window and just turn out something that feels right in the moment. The gene behind a lot of my artwork really relates to making rules and then breaking them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the practice, James instills a branding mentality to his work by creating strong, consistently applied identities with \u201cset creative boundaries\u201d within bold colours, impactful type treatments and highly manipulated photography or computer generated elements. James learned during his time in non-fiction filmmaking that he was interested in history, current affairs and geopolitics, which resulted in James bringing his visual acuity from design into filmmaking (and vice versa). When it comes to telling engaging stories in his work, James has got it nailed down, making incredible use of calligraphy and the directionality of Arabic script to bulk out his works in swirling, mesmerising line-work and thus infusing it with political weight. Some may not be able to read it, but you can tell what it\u2019s saying. Just like hardcore music, it\u2019s all in the feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When graphic designer James Stuart isn\u2019t kicking out the jams in Arabic-language punk band Haram, he\u2019s managing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-460675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}