Friday March 29th, 2024
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Mofkera Notebooks

What's that you say? Notebooks in the shape of Nintendo Gameboys? Could it be? Indeed it is, and so much more with Mohamed Meleas's Mofkera Notebooks…

Staff Writer

Mofkera Notebooks

We're not entirely sure why, but gimmick-y products bring us an unusual amount of glee. Why that is is a question for another day, or a psych think tank – but we do feel a little skip of joy when we come across products like Mofkera's notebooks, for instance -- the brainchild of Mohamed Meleas. The brand, which was launched two years ago, started out with notebooks featuring characters from El Leila El Kebeera, a show definitively ingrained in Egypt's pop culture.

Meleas, a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, tells us, "I used to do illustrations of these characters all the time in college, so I had the idea to translate that onto the cover of a notebook." With a background in graphic design, Meleas took to creating the funky, fun notebooks and soon they spread like wildfire, going from being featured in small bookstores to Diwan, and soon enough you'll even be able to get your hands on them in Virgin Megastores! When you get Richard Branson's stamp of approval, you know you're doing something right…

Eventually, Meleas started expanding the brand, creating a sub-brand called Daftar, which is even cooler than his original works, featuring notebooks that are identical replicas of items in our daily lives – in the 90s that is. Think Game Boys and video cassettes - those empty ones you'd buy and record shows over.

"I started noticing a lot of people were doing similar Egyptian-themed things, so I thought I'd go in a different direction," Meleas tells us. Deciding to nonetheless stick to a series of items that defined our childhoods, Meleas says he was focusing on "things we used to see zaman." Like those typical matchstick boxes, and tape cassettes that are such cool carbon copies they'll have you reaching for your imaginary Walkman that you haven’t seen since 1999.

For those more inclined to buy things that make you go 'OMG that's so pretty" the brand also has a range of seriously cool notebooks adorned with geometric Islamic patterns, and others overloaded with enough flowers to make Lana Del Rey proud.

The brand's versatility, flipping easily from artsy flower child to funky Egyptian cultural references to bringing back the 90s, makes us want to start writing, like, with pens and paper, again. And we can't even remember what our handwriting looks like…

You can check out their Facebook page here