March 2026. Freelance. Cairo, Egypt/Jeddah, KSA.

Brand Design Execution by Noor Adel Bekhiet, for Shughl Ndeef, a creative agency operating across Jeddah, Cairo, and the UAE. The project built the brand’s visual identity from the ground up, spanning three distinct directions — currently in progress, with the client’s chosen direction moving into full development.

The brief, in one line: Build a visual identity for a creative agency working across three markets that reads as distinctly Arab and North African, without boxing itself into a regional niche — global enough to travel, specific enough to mean something.

The problem: The tension sat inside the name itself. Shughl Ndeef — “Clean Work” — exists in both Arabic and English, and the identity needed to hold both simultaneously: rooted in place, not diluted into something generically international to seem more “global.” The work wasn’t choosing between local and global, it was finding a visual language specific enough to feel unmistakably of the region while still landing with an international creative audience.

The direction chosen, and why: Of the three directions presented, the client moved forward with the second — a look rooted in vintage Cairo storefronts, drawing on matchbox packaging and old signage typography, then pulled into the present with a modern twist. It won because it was the most playable: the client saw the most room to build clever, ownable content from it — which was the real ask underneath the brief.