The softwares we have (You rock,Illustrator!) are great beasts of code. You can do so many amazing things easily. I love the Pathfinder Option-it's just fantastic.

Finally, I  just want to say that, you've got to keep practicing and practicing. You're gonna find so many ways of creating things, so many interesting ideas, you're gonna find what you really want to do in this field. And when you discover your talents, you can perfect them and be so amazing.

Here's Kili:

Who cares if I had a nice day, huh? I do, lol. I'm a very negative person, and today I was happy, positive and grateful. On my way to design school, I rolled down the car window, took a deep breath of fresh air, and admired the blue sky.

Rare's the day I'm this content with life. At school, I had a GD seminar which was really cool. They were showing us the latest trends in Graphics like web design, animations, motions, etc. I think this lecture came right on time because I was feeling like a lame Graphic Designer. I just wasn't doing enough practice and to be fair to myself, I was quite busy with other things.

You know how when you first start off something new, you're really pumped up and motivated? I was pumped up to learn Lebanese Arabic so I let my GD and Modern Standard Arabic take the back seat.

I'm actually having so much fun learning Lebanese Arabic. I watch this amazing show called Ward w Chouk, which now I think means Rose and Thorn (I originally thought it meant Rose and Fork)

Here's a lame GIF which was supposed to be a nice save-the-environmental kinda thing with the trees rotating around the earth and birds flying and clouds floating. Stellar job done (not)

Well, that's it. I just came here to say I had a nice day. You know, some time before, I felt like blogging was my job or something, which led me to feel like I had to do it like a chore. but now I just use it as a journal. I get next to no views anyway. BUT:
If you are reading this, you're great and amazing. Thanks a bunch, fam. Could you comment? It would make my day. Ciao.

Hi all.
In my 2nd last blog post, I said I was learning Lebanese Arabic. It's basically the dialect of Arabic spoken in the Levantine Region for example in countries like Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. May Allah save our people  from the wars and takfiri militants and Israeli settlers. Aameen.

So yeah, one of the first verbs that I learned in Lebanese is the verb to want. It's the best verb to learn because, literally guys, you can go on practising: I want this, I want water, etc etc. You can even mix it up with English words. I'm still sorting out how to write Lebanese, is it written in Arabic letters, or should I just use English letters, you know? But in this post I'll go ahead and write it out in English.

For "I want", you say, "Baddi".
"I want water" - "Baddi moy"
"I want to go" - "Baddi rouh"
"I want to sleep"- "Baddi nemi"

Just a quick Arabic Grammar tip; in Arabic, you usually don't need to use a pronoun in front of a verb conjugation, except in a case where you want to emphasize the meaning. For example, you could say, "Ana baddi rouh" where "ana" means I, and at the same time, "baddi" means "I want" so it's kind of a repetition.

Moving on. "You want" is actually gonna be split up based on whether the "you" in question is a female or male person. I'll add a (m) to indicate male and (f) for female. You (m) is "enta" and you (f) is "enti"
"You (m) want" is "baddak"
"You (f) want" is "baddik"

"You (m) want water" - "Baddak moy"
"You (f) want to eat?" - "Baddik tekoli?"
"You (f) want coffee?" - "Baddik ahwe?"

In Modern Standard Arabic, which the official form of Arabic used in government documents, schools, sign posts (you get the picture-everything serious) is constant throughout all Arabic speaking countries. Why I'm mentioning this is because of one of the slight deviations in pronunciation in the Lebanese dialect. You see, in MSA, coffee is "qahwa", but in Lebanese, as you saw above, it's "ahwe". This is because the dialect substitutes "qaf" for "hamza" which is basically a glottal stop.

Next up, we're gonna learn "he wants" and "she wants". He is "huwe" and she is "hiyye".

"He wants" - "Beddu"
"She wants" - "Bedda"

"He wants to go" - "Beddu yrouh"
"She wants a car" - "Bedda seyara"
"She wants to eat" - "Bedda tekol"

Huzza! That's it for today's Learn Lebanese lesson! I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to use "Baddi" aka "I want" sometime today. It's great to know how to speak a dialect, really. You get to sound more friendly, plus you can understand Lebanese TV! Speaking of which, yesterday I got to watch my new fave "Ward w chouk" Turkish drama. It was kind of a happy episode and that basically means everything spoken is going to be basic conversations that are easy to understand. On the other hand, if it's a dramatic epsiode, it would be filled with complex words like-I don't know, "You killed my sympathy when you destroyed my peonies"
By the way,I'm still trying to fin out what Ward w Chouk means. I mean I know that "ward" means "rose" but "chouk" can't possibly mean fork, can it? That really doesn't sound like a fantastical name for an emotional series. "The Rose and the Fork"? It doesn't sound right, haha.

So, you've enrolled in a course, you want a Diploma or a Certificate in Multimedia. You have your programs, applications, etc, and now you want to know: How can I become a better Graphic Designer?
Maybe you're calm and happy, but maybe you're fuming and pissed off: How can I be a better Graphic Designer? You browse dribbble.com and behance.net and you're wondering how on earth do people do these things? No one teaches this in school! So, fear not, brave knight, I'm here to give you my personal insight on how to be a better Graphic Designer.

1. Practice
This is probably not new to you. Every one keeps saying, "Practice makes perfect" yada, yada. You've heard it all before. You practiced a bit at first, but now you're a pro at using the programs, whether it's Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and you feel as though you don't need anymore practice. But you still can't do what those dribbblers are posting. Maybe you feel like you don't have enough creative juice in you, or you're just not cut out for GD. Give yourself a mental slap-negative thoughts are not tolerated in this industry. You've got to keep practicing; no matter if you're a newbie or a professional. Hunt down tutorials all over the web. Repeat after them like there's no tomorrow!
 My personal favourite place for tutorials is this marvelous website by envatotuts called design.tutsplus 
Go here to visit it.
It's great, really. They have step by step instructions for everything graphics related, not to mention tutorials in other topics such as java and programming. So here you can follow the tutorial and then post your results in the comments section and the author of the post will reply you, say it's great or critique your results. They are new tutorials everyday, not to mention hundreds of pages of tutorials for you to browse through.
Sometimes I check out a tutorial and I can literally see all the steps followed just by looking at the final picture. When I hit that stage the number of tutorials I did actually started going down. That was wrong of me, I should have kept going. Doing more tutorials. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that you need over 1000 hours of practice to call yourself so much as a amateur. And you know what? These tutorials will give you ideas in future, that's what you're doing the tuts for, right?
Here's the deal: One person attends all the classes blah blah, but another goes ahead and does tutorials-You be the judge; who's gonna learn more, who's gonna be the better designer?

2. Copy off other people's designs
I know it sounds scandalous, but it's for the sake of your betterment. Don't post exactly the person's work. Don't post it online anywhere, in fact. Don't say you heard it here. Just to make it clear, don't point fingers to me when you get caught. I'm saying just do it at home or whatever as practice.
Here's how it goes: go browsing for cool graphics, and try to recreate them. Do your best, the designer probably didn't use the steps you're using. The whole purpose of this is to be able to see how Graphic Designers work; what do they do? Here's where you collect your ideas. The professionals, see their work, see their creativity.

3. Browse through Graphic Designer Portfolios
I stated dribbble and behance before. Here, millions of designers come to post their work. You can collect inspiration, motivation, creativity and ideas. Check out the new trends, communicate with others like you. In addition to the sites listed above, many designers have their own website portfolios. They showcase their work for potential customers, and you can take a look at how they work with the customers, usually on their About page.

4. Keep your eyes out for Graphic Design.
Graphic Design is literally everywhere. On TV, outside on billboards, on books, magazines, you name it. Watch out for what is trending, how graphics vary for different topics. For example for a Women's Magazine we could be having bright colours, nice fonts, elegant pictures, while for a Men's Magazine it could be dark colours, bold blocky fonts and solid pictures.
Maybe you're driving out, check out what fonts people use, how they arrange their work for large audiences, what colours, etc.

The most important thing is to keep practicing! In fact, just after this I have a tutorial waiting for me. You can check it out here. I'll finish it up and be sure to post it in the comments below.
If you have any tips for the budding designer, don't hesitate to add them in the comments section of my blog below. I really hope you get to become a successful GD.

With the insurgence of book bloggers, especially on Instagram, it's a wonder I haven't jumped on the band wagon. Which I'm actually good at- jumping on band wagons, that is. Instagram book bloggers are so cool, especially with their amazing pictures (my jealousy is usually visible from space). They lay out their current reads, go ahead and add embellishments especially dope mugs, lights, funkos and other decorations, and their captions are usually reviews and such.
Now I ain't showing off (Yes, yes I am) but I've read quite a number of books out there, and I think if anyone, I'm certainly qualified for the post of a book blogger. So why the heck am I not?
1. I don't remember what I read
I'm not even joking, I can't remember certain details of a book immediately after I read it. It's mostly because I read it for the sake of living in the moment or whatever. I tried correcting that by taking notes, noting down cool lines and stuff, but it kept reminding me of high school literature, dang it. Some lame ass teacher who taught us Animal Farm, if you came to class later than him, he would kick you out. Yeah, I got kicked out a couple of times. Such events usually lead you to have less than positive feelings for the word literature.

2. I'm kinda lazy
I'll tell you one thing: I haven't posted on insta in like 6 weeks. Crazy! Anyway I don't really get anything beneficial from insta anymore. I never really went out of my way to make friends and since I don't exactly post pictures of myself, I guess I'm not that popular. I know I said it's becasue I'm lazy, but it's also becasue I'm busy these days. I've got my hands full learning Graphic Design and learning Arabic. I've recently embarked on a journey to learn the Levantine/ Lebanese dialect of Arabic so I can understand TV more. Uh huh. Just for the sake of understanding these Turkish dramas that are dubbed into Lebanese Arabic. Hey-at least I use my brain for something! By the way, Turkish dramas are the bomb. Literally, Turkish houses are just dreamy. I used to watch a Turkish drama called "Zehrat Al Qasr" which translates to Zehra's Story. It's basically about his girl called Zehra (In case you didn't figure) and yeah, pretty much her life in a crazy woman hating home. I watched it faithfully everyday at 6:00 pm, but it ended, haha. Now I'm interested in another Turkish drama called "Ward w chouk". It's pretty dramatic.

3. I usually read ebooks
I can't exactly take pictures of my tablet and post them on insta. Ok maybe I can, but other people have real live paperback copies of the books, and all these trinkets and embellishments that I don't have, their posts are so colourful and thematic, and let's face it-I don't exactly have photographic skills, so I'll just stick to making anonymous fan edits to post on tumblr and pinterest.

4. What is it with the cannons?
I know this isn't a reason for why I'm not a book blogger. But seriously though why would you post this and leave my heart hanging by a thread of an artery:

I mean, God. That's freaking Fred Weasley. The whole thing had me watery eyed but when I googled it, J K Rowling had said that Fred didn't get ghostified because he wasn't afraid of death. So ok, at first I was pissed off by this cannon, then I kind of appreciated it. Like a watery smile, saying yes, the HP books might have ended, but the HP World still lives on.

*Bows out* Btw can you comment? Tell me what you think about being a full time/ part time book blogger, and what you think of cannons. It'll be a real treat.

Ok, let's say you're marooned in a remote lonely island in the middle of an unknown sea- which would you rather have : brains, or beauty?
(I know the whole island thing is so cliche, but deal with it)

I know most people would say they would rather have brains. I mean, wouldn't you need brains for survival? Build a shelter, look for food, send some kind of signals. I don't know why but the other option would be the girl crying over her broken mani nails.

But before you go all gung-ho on me, first things first- by beauty I don't mean who you naturally are, I mean caking your face with makeup and believing it to be the only reason for your existence. Oh God, I'm doing this all wrong. If you cake yourself up with makeup, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. Should I end this post here? It's going all wrong.

*cries* I just wanna make myself feel better

I'm just saying that there're people out there who don't have the right self esteem about their bodies and when they go on insta and see all the cool girls out there, they just feel like-like curling up and waiting for the world to end (no, it's definitely not me, just sitting behind this laptop on a cold May evening)
The world is chock-full with amazing  people who look like real angels. Angels, I tell you. There's a person I once saw, I'll never forget them, looked like an angel come down to bring peace. Isn't yellow the colour of peace? Yeah, I think so.

I was talking with my sister the other day, about this same topic. And by the end of the talk, I was feeling aight about myself. Then I went on insta. So many beautiful people. Sigh.

The world today expects you to be plastic perfect in terms of beauty. I don't know how I personally can live up to such high expectations. I don't really wear all that much makeup, but I know it's such a hassle. If you want to know, I only use organic shea butter on my face- which is always as dry as the freaking Sahara- and the occasional eyeliner.

I also need to say that just because you're beautiful doesn't mean you don't have brains. And just because you have brains, doesn't mean you aren't beautiful. Take Hermione for instance- she's so cool.

I just want to say to myself, and you, o honoured reader, that we're all on a journey to find ourselves. And when I find myself, I expect I'll live peacefully and at one with myself. I hope we can all reach there one day. To be so grateful and immersed in our selves, to live with who we are, and to accept ourselves.

If you've been following my blog lately, you'll see that I recently launched a series on "Top Arabic Words to Learn" and I think learning verbs is very crucial to understanding Arabic. If you check out my post on my Arabic learning journey, you'll see that I used to memorize only common phrases and sentences, but when I started learning verbs, my understanding of Arabic shot up by about 60%. Click here
So I decided to start this series, to bring to people words that would actually help them. I started out with more common words, so you can check them out below.
Part 1
Part 2

TOP ARABIC VERBS TO LEARN
Take note that I've written them in the past tense of the he form conjugation.
1.  Jaa'a/ To come.
You know, when I was first learning this word, I used to confuse this word and dhahaba- which is actually below. It's because "go" and "jaa" sound so similar. In Egyptian Arabic, people actually read 'jeem' as 'g' (as in 'girl' ) even though it's supposed to be read as "j" as in "jolly"
I've done this before: using opposites to learn. You expect "jaa'a" to mean "go" but in fact it means "come". Neat, right?

2. Dhahaba/ To go
One of the first verbs I learned, in fact. I remember thinking, "How do I even start learning verbs? Which ones should I start with?" I thought back to my high school days of learning French, where they seamlessly integrated us into verbs and grammar. So much so that we were able to write short essays with just the verbs we had been given in the first few lessons. And of course the first verb was "aller". I even still remember the conjugations- je vais, tu vas.

3. Dakhala/ To enter
One of the easiest verbs, really. It occurs a lot in the Quran when talking about how the righteous people will enter paradise, as well as occurring in many ad'iyyah (plural of dua/ supplication) where you ask to enter jannah (paradise)

4.Shahada/ To watch
I know that the word "shahaada" is probably what you are well versed with. It means to bear witness and it's basically what people say when they are entering Islam. When I'm watching Arabic talk shows I always hear the host say "Mushaahideen AlKiraam" and I go, "What does that mean anyway?"
It in fact means "Honoured viewers" or watchers if you may. I think it's a good word to add to your vocabulary.

5. Akala/ To eat
If I recall, this was one of the first words I learned, right after "Dhahaba". I mean, I love food. How do I say to eat? To make learning verbs easier, you should take the past tense of the he form conjugation, where all you need to do is add 'a' to each root letter. He ate is "akala" and honestly, if I had known that, I would have saved myself a lot of hassle. Let me tell you this- it made me feel like Arabic may be mysterious, but I could indeed conquer it.

Most of these verbs were taken from this book as a reference. It's a great book for a native English speaker who is a beginner Arabic language learner.
How to Learn Arabic as a Native English Speaker: A Quick and Easy Guide to learning Arabic, Including Basic Nouns and Grammar by Allen Loper.

Is it possible to fangirl over a font? Read on to find out.
You didn't have to read too far- and yes, it's 2000% possible to fangirl over a font.
I love fonts- and I especially love FREE fonts.

Ladies and gents, I present to you the coolest awesomest font of 2016
*drum roll*
MONTSERRAT
Can I get a whoop?
It's made by Julieta Ulanovsky who is a Queen (proclaimed by moi) All Hail!

This font. This font, people. It makes me want to sing sonnets (btw you do not want to hear my singing voice- think frogs and crows)
This amazing sans serif font has 8 styles :

And the cherry on top is the fact that this font is absolutely deliciously free for both personal and commercial use!
It's cool and official looking and can be used for posters and book covers, but it also has a fun side to it- The bold point style can be used for fun and creative purposes. I especially love the capital letters!
I use this font literally everywhere! For example in this super serious gif about life:


Great advice from the one and only.

You can tell I just learned a new trick recently- making gifs. I think you can excuse me for going overboard with them.
In all its glory....
MONTSERRAT


Hey, doesn't mont mean mountain? I'm getting the font author to do an interview with me sometime soon so we can discuss the ins and outs of this marvelous creation. Yeah, no. I'm an awkward duck around people.
Get the font HERE