Samar Maakaroun

Arab and British in equal measure, Samar Maakaroun is a designer and creative director renowned for her creatively multilingual approach to design. Seeing multiplicity as a continuous source of opportunity for insight and discovery, she thrives in the hyphenated space of possibility between her two identities – where cultures and languages intersect, integrate, align or diverge.

With a career spanning 20+ years, Samar explores the intersection and integration of culture, using typography and language as a way of seeing and understanding the world, as a form of reflection, as well as a tool for discovery and storytelling.

Samar has delivered transformative projects worldwide, including Apple’s first entry to the Arab world, naming and brand extensions for finance companies such as SumUp, destination brands including Dubai and Sharjah, and gamified wellbeing products like Totem.

As a Partner at the multi-disciplinary, independently owned design studio Pentagram, she sits at the forefront of design legacy and innovation – with work that bridges cultures and languages, across sectors as diverse as arts, culture, technology and education.

Samar's Talk

Drawing as thinking

Samar’s talk offers a glimpse into her creative process, where drawing serves as a tool for thought, bridging memory, letterforms, meaning, and context. In an age dominated by artificial intelligence and endless content, she explores the quiet space between the physical and the digital, moving seamlessly between them—thinking manually and amplifying digitally. With curiosity and openness, borrowing freely from Arabic to English, East to West, she'll share some projects where design elements come together to recover, rewrite, and reinvent the stories we tell about identity.