Patrick Semaan, the talented multimedia designer, never ceases to amaze me. Every time I speak to Patrick, he is up to something interesting, and absolutely challenging. Recently, he unveiled an unprecedented journey in showcasing Kuwait in a totally new light, The Kuwait Alphabet project.
Starting the project three years ago while living in London, Patrick was innocently driven by nostalgia to Google Earth, trying to find an area in France where he grew up. In doing so, he was amazed at how many buildings, structures and nature scenes looked like alphabetical letters. He explains, “I realized I could find the entire alphabet using Google Earth and this is how the idea was born. I picked Kuwait because France was way too easy. Kuwait has a flatter, ‘less built’ area so it was more challenging. I checked online and found that someone had already completed this project in the UK. This motivated me to explore the notion of a Kuwait alphabet, as the previous success story made the idea more feasible.”
After collecting twelve letters, Patrick was half way through, when the Google Earth program suddenly crashed. Everything he found and saved was gone. He adds, “When I realized I had to start over, I gave up. I put the project on hold, until a year ago when I started finding letters all over again. Slowly but surely, I became engrossed with the project—I worked daily until I finished it all.”
So it’s official, not only does Patrick know Kuwait by heart now, he has officially released the project online for the world to enjoy. We couldn’t help but ask Patrick about the hardest letters to find, he responds, “The hardest letters were R, N and Z. I initially thought Z and N would be the easiest, I couldn’t have been more wrong in assuming that! I’m so happy that eventually, it all came together.” Patrick also composed a video that is a flyover of all the letters, a nice little trip anyone can take to discover all the letters while watching Kuwait, from a top view.
For more on his work, please visit: www.patricksemaan.com and follow him on Twitter at PatrickSemaan.