Moroccan Artist Tapped to Design Middle East App Store’s Visual Identity

The new designer of the Middle East app store is a versatile artist, who has been a jack-of-all-trades in the field before finding his bearings.

Originally from the ochre city (Marrakech), Mohamed Smyej, is considered a "discreet and talented artist, who has always preferred to evolve in the underground rather than in the spotlights." His notoriety is due not to regular training in the field, but rather to a creative adventure with friends, according to the newspaper L’Opinion.

It was after launching a "streetwear" collection that the young self-taught artist disappeared from the artistic landscape for several years. He had embarked on a kind of "fascinating but endless artistic introspection." He will use the time to experiment with "photography, painting, design, hypnotherapy, passing through Reiki and other energy practices."

His latest artistic expression to date is the creation of digital images that take on the appearance of the canvases of great masters in the labyrinthine world of Simo Smyej, "where the pigment is replaced by the pixel." But as a "good Marrakchi who respects himself, Mohamed Smyej remains close to the Moroccan craft universe by basing all of his graphic work on the art of Zellige." As he likes to say, "the patterns used are a reflection of his distant childhood memories in the Smyej family home, located in the heart of the medina."

He is a meticulous artist, who has a taste for detail and aesthetics, who has managed to give "Zellige, too long confined to a sacred religious connotation," the possibility of freeing itself from this constraint and this "label to explore infinite possibilities." It is certainly this freedom of thought, this artist’s ability to bring out the good in everything, that prompted Apple to call on him. According to the Emirati daily Khaleej Times, he would have been tasked with redesigning the home page of the Middle Eastern App Store for the month of Ramadan.