Home / Graphic Designer for MENA

Across the region

Graphic Designer for the MENA Region

Arabic-first identity, storefronts and packaging for brands across the Middle East and North Africa.

MENA is not one market, but it does share one design problem: Arabic is nearly always treated as something applied to a finished English design rather than as the design itself. I work the other way round — the Arabic layout is drawn first, and the English version is built from it.

Start your project See my work

Arabic-first, in every market
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
Salla, Zid, Shopify, WordPress, OpenCart

An Arabic supplement product page designed by Aya Elfeky — Arabic-first product interface work.

What I design

Design that has to work in two directions

Every one of these is drawn right-to-left first, then built outward into English where a brand needs both.

Bilingual brand identity

A logo and type system that carry the same weight in Arabic and Latin, instead of one script being an afterthought of the other.

E-commerce storefronts

Full purchase paths on the platforms the region actually sells on — Salla and Zid in the Gulf, Shopify and WooCommerce more widely.

Arabic RTL interfaces

Mirrored layouts with the right type, the right numerals and icon directions that are not simply reversed by accident.

Product and packaging

Packaging that reads on a shelf and as a marketplace thumbnail, in either script.

Landing pages

One page, one promise — for a campaign that has to run across several markets at once.

Social media design

Templates that hold a brand together across a feed, in Arabic, English, or both.

Where I work

The markets I work in most

The practice is the same everywhere. What changes is which platform a market sells on and which script leads.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf

The bulk of my work. Salla and Zid dominate, Arabic usually leads, and the phone is almost always where the sale happens.

Egypt

Where I am based. A mix of Arabic and bilingual brands, and a wider spread of platforms including WooCommerce and OpenCart.

The Levant and North Africa

Bilingual by default more often than the Gulf, with French sitting alongside Arabic in the Maghreb.

Everywhere, the same rule

Arabic is designed, not translated. That single decision is what separates a store that feels native from one that feels converted.

Selected work

Recent projects

Jawhara — brand identity for a construction firm

Vitaroot — a supplement store built on trust

Muthlath — a wall-art store that stays quiet

At a glance

The practical details

Based in

Mansoura, Egypt — working remotely across the region.

Markets

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, and bilingual brands beyond them.

Platforms

Salla · Zid · Shopify · WordPress · WooCommerce · OpenCart · Easy Order

Languages

Arabic and English, both designed natively.

Every project is quoted after we talk. See how packages are put together.

Questions

Before we start

Which MENA markets do you work in?

Mostly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and Egypt where I am based. Bilingual brands elsewhere in the region work the same way, because the design problem — Arabic and Latin holding equal weight — does not change with the border.

What does "Arabic-first" actually mean?

The right-to-left layout is drawn before the English one, not flipped out of it afterwards. It changes where navigation sits, how numbers and dates are set, which way icons point, and how forms read. Flipping a finished English design gets all of those subtly wrong.

Do you work in French as well as Arabic and English?

I design in Arabic and English. For Maghreb brands that need French, the layout and type system are built to take a third language, and the French copy comes from you or your translator.

Can you work across several markets at once?

Yes — that is usually what a regional campaign needs. The identity and templates are built once, then adapted per market rather than redesigned.

How do we start?

Send a message on WhatsApp with what you sell, which markets you sell into and which platform you are on. I will tell you what I would do first.

Also here

By market and platform

The same practice, framed for where you are selling.