With Youm Wara Youm, multidisciplinary artist Yomna Mohamed transforms a familiar household object into a vivid exploration of Egyptian visual culture. Produced in collaboration with Makan Press, the 2026 calendar exists somewhere between functional tool and artist book, printed in five Risograph colours in a limited edition of 100.
The project draws inspiration from the visual language of vernacular print artifacts commonly found across Egypt. Calendars, posters and printed ephemera hanging in homes, barber shops, kiosks and workshops often carry a distinctive graphic vocabulary built from saturated colours, devotional imagery, ornamental layouts and expressive typography.
These everyday objects rarely enter design history, yet they form a living archive of visual culture.
“This project is rooted in copying, and I see that as an act of care,” Mohamed explains. “By closely studying and reproducing vernacular artifacts, I’m interested in preserving visual languages that often disappear before they’re ever considered design history.”
Rather than reproducing these references directly, Youm Wara Youm reimagines them through contemporary printmaking. Risograph printing allows the colours to remain bold and layered while maintaining the tactile imperfections that make independent print culture so distinctive.
The calendar format itself is intentional. It reflects the original context of these visual references while reframing them as a collectible art object. Each month carries a composition influenced by everyday Egyptian graphics, while short phrases at the bottom of the pages introduce moments of humour, reflection or encouragement.
These quotes range from street sayings to devotional reminders, creating a dialogue between design, daily life and visual storytelling.
A key decision within the project was language. Unlike many contemporary design projects produced for international audiences, Youm Wara Youm exists entirely in Arabic.
“This was my first full project in Arabic with no English translations, and that felt deeply reclaiming and empowering,” Mohamed says. “For years, especially during my art education at Parsons, I often worked in multilingual formats to be understood by Western audiences. With this project, I wanted it to exist fully for Arabic speakers, my people, without needing to translate for anyone else.”
The result is a publication that highlights how design traditions rooted in the Global South continue to shape contemporary visual culture. By treating vernacular print as a source of authorship and cultural memory, Youm Wara Youm celebrates the everyday design languages that quietly surround us.
Yomna Mohamed is a multidisciplinary designer, photographer and artist whose work explores Egyptian and Arab visual culture through print, typography and archival research. Her practice often focuses on everyday objects and overlooked ephemera, reframing them as carriers of cultural knowledge and visual history.
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