The IdeaLists

While most The IdeaLists’ action happens on Uncle Sam’s turf, we have an incredible community of global creatives who keep us abreast. We heard from Creative Producer Alex Margaritis at Al Jazeera English shortly after the height of the Arab Spring, wherein he wrote us some  insightful updates on his experience:

"As a designer it was refreshing to create 'quote' graphics not just from world leaders, composed of words filtered through press secretaries and speechwriters, but also from the man or woman in Tahrir Square, Cairo waiting for Mubarak to step down."

We decided to follow up during Ramadan in Qatar, when Alex had some time to breath though, he sighed, little around to eat.

What was it like designing the breaking news during the Arab Spring?

It was hectic. It was the busiest time I’ve ever seen in my career. It was extremely exciting, groundbreaking news. It was something that has never happened in the region and people didn’t expect it to happen. A big advantage here, as opposed to a Western channel, was working side by side with people whose home countries these were. Egyptians, Tunisians—for the majority of them it was a welcome development. It’s different to tell a cover story about your hometown, your fellow citizens and family becoming free.

How much did social media play a role in these uprisings, would you say from an insider’s perspective?

It was an element. I think it has been slightly overstated. I think the majority of people in Tahrir Square in Cairo weren’t on Twitter and or Facebook. We did a story about the group of young guys who started the Facebook and Twitter sites. They revitalized younger people who might not otherwise been involved. The older people were very much already politically minded. More than organizing within these countries, social media was letting the rest of the world know what happened.

How so? What was the censorship like with bigger media?

It was a very comical situation where there were hundreds of thousands of people in Tunisia and Cairo out in the squares and the state TV was showing soap operas because they’re not going to cover it, it wasn’t going to happen. Through these social networks it really got out to the world. There were times when journalists were hiding and they couldn’t go outside. At time we were very dependent on social network coverage; it was very important. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a Facebook or Twitter revolution. I feel labelling it something like that takes away from the achievement of these people in the streets.

What did you see that we may have missed, watching this happen in the newsroom?

To anyone outside the channel I think one thing people don’t know is how difficult sometimes it was to get this stuff on the air. In Egypt for example, we had to knock on peoples’ doors and try and get them to allow us in and get cameras on balconies because our studios had been raided. We had people hiding in random places doing interviews on Skype in living rooms. Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic were fired upon and one of the cameramen was tragically killed in Lybia.

The general idea is that when you do a live shot, the background is a shot of where you are. We had loads of journalists where the background was like where I am now, here in this apartment, because if someone knew where they were they’d be found.

Why does Al Jazeera English have such slow adoption to broadcast networks in the US?

It's quite interesting, maybe even a bit baffling that it has taken this long for us to get on a major cable network in the states. We provide a news channel that hundreds of millions of people around the world watch, and a lot of Americans also want to watch. This is evident from the staggering web traffic we have to our website from the US. Especially during the Arab Awakening the users from the US went up 2500% and people all across the country were watching our live stream to keep up to date with what was happening the region.

What’s it like inside the design dept. at Al Jazeera English headquarters?

A lot of colleagues from other departments say they like to come and chill out for a few minutes in the graphics room. We are a seperate office away from the microphones and cameras of the newsroom so we can play some music and create an environment that makes the rush and stress of live news more manageable.  The walls are full of mood boards, storyboards...

Tell me about creative industries in Qatar. How much is imported and how much is local?

There are design firms here, but the majority is imported. Qatar is still a country building up. 30 or 40 years ago it was desert—there was nothing here. So I think design firms and the creative industries are pretty low on the scale of development when you build a new country from scratch. They’re building hospitals, museums the rest.

But there’s a really good design school here called Virginia Commonwealth University. It’s state of the art, and at Al Jazeera we have three members of our staff that have come from that school in the last six months. The industry here is catching up slowly. Most of the companies in Qatar are big multi nationals. They have design done in New York or London. They’re hiring the BBHs and the Saatchis. That will change. A lot of good designers are coming out this culture.