Qout Market Craft Fair
2026
Souq Qout is a two-night craft fair for Qout Market, held at the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre on Sunday and Monday, 22nd and 23rd February 2026, from 8 PM to 12 AM. It took place during Ramadan, when Kuwait comes alive after iftar and the evening hours become the heart of the city's social life. I designed a bilingual pair of posters, Arabic and English, to carry that energy.
I didn't want to draw a market. Stalls, baskets and rows of vendors would have been the literal route, and the expected one. I wanted people to feel what it is like to walk into a souq: the crowding, the layering, colour and pattern coming from every direction until the eye can't settle on any one thing. The whole composition is built from abstracted forms that hint at objects without becoming them. A teapot silhouette anchors the centre, with a domed lid and a rounded body, while tea glasses, stars, beads, arches, scalloped edges and wavy ribbons stack and overlap like goods piled high in a stall. Nothing is a product, yet everything feels like something you might find there. A geometric band of orange and terracotta draws on woven textile and sadu-inspired patterning, a nod to the craft traditions the fair celebrates.
The palette carries the same memory. It comes from the saturated, unapologetic colour of Kuwait's markets, especially Souq Al-Mubarakiya, where spices, fabrics, glassware and painted signage all compete for attention. Warm reds, oranges and yellows meet deep blues, greens and soft pinks, bleeding into one another through a grainy gradient texture that feels printed and tactile, closer to risograph than screen. The grain gives the shapes a handmade quality, which suits a fair devoted to handmade work, and it ties the heritage of these colours to something contemporary.
The two posters share one illustration but shift in mood. The Arabic version sits on a deep blue that fades into cream, like the sky just after sunset, while the English version flips to a warm coral, like lantern glow. Side by side, they suggest the turn from dusk to night that defines a Ramadan evening. The headlines are bold and wide, with the horizontal strokes of the title extended to echo the elongated lines of Arabic calligraphy, a deliberate bridge between the two scripts. The supporting text is set in blue to match the palette, and the Qout Market logo sits within the artwork in a red circle, like a stamp on a market bag.
Client: Qout Market · Venue: Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre · Supported by Boubyan Bank · February 2026
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