The name makes people smile. I kept it anyway. Here is where it comes from, and why it is still around.
Ananas Frais is a name I picked for myself at sixteen. It was for games, for videos, to exist online like the people I was watching. People found it odd. Some of them made fun of it.
It stayed. Through school, university, training, the stretches where I had no idea where I was heading: I never dropped it. Six years on it is still there, on Twitch, on YouTube, on Instagram, in my emails. Everywhere.
That sixteen-year-old handle became the name of my studio.
A pineapple is a complicated visual object. A shape you spot among a thousand, a crown that grows on its own, a diamond-patterned skin. And a taste that stings before it comforts.
That is what I look for in a design: presence at first glance, and enough substance to hold at the tenth.
The rest of the symbolism fits. The pineapple stands for warmth, welcome and hospitality, and it is called the king of fruits. As for "frais", it is the question I ask myself on every project: will this still hold up in two years?
The question comes up every time: the logo is not a pineapple. It is a falcon in a dive.
Chahine, in Arabic, is the name of the peregrine falcon, شاهين. The fastest animal on the planet. It was there before the handle, before the studio, before any of the rest.
The name comes from the fruit, the mark comes from my first name. Ananas Frais is what is written on the quotes. The falcon is the one who signs them.
A sixteen-year-old handle, kept for six years, now the name of a studio. It took all that time for it to look like me.
The studio is running, and alongside it I am looking for a work-study place in digital art direction, from this autumn. Client work carries on: it is the same job, done on both sides.
Describe it in a few lines. I come back to you with a quote, or a question if something is missing.