Design Doha: what a bilingual identity requires from a project
Preparing an identity for two languages requires deciding how people will encounter them. Placing a smaller translation in the footer may accommodate the text, but it also establishes a hierarchy. The Design Doha case proposes considering languages from the identity’s composition onward, before adapting individual pieces.
Pentagram credits the project to Samar Maakaroun and her team. According to the agency’s case study, Arabic and English receive equal presence in a shared typographic composition; extended strokes connect parts of the language. This parity is a design intention stated by the authors. The material consulted does not, by itself, demonstrate how each visitor understood the application. Explore the project at Pentagram
Bilingual brand identity: project publication is not the biennial’s opening
Pentagram’s news index records the work on October 8, 2026 and coverage notes on October 14, 19 and 21. These are agency records about the project and coverage. They do not, on their own, establish the first day of public use for all pieces. Timeline in Pentagram’s official index
Design Doha’s website, meanwhile, gives the biennial’s opening as November 5, 2026. When consulted on October 22, that was a future date. Analyzing the identity now therefore does not mean reporting the experience of an event that has already taken place. Planned date on the Design Doha page
What place does each language occupy in the experience?
Our editorial reading is that the case helps anticipate a commissioning question: do both audiences need access to the same information at the same touchpoint? The answer affects format, content volume and reviews. There is no single solution for every company.
A directional sign may need both languages together. A long catalog may have separate versions. A website may offer language selection, provided the intended journey is discussed in the project. These are planning alternatives; the choice should consider who uses the material, where and for what purpose.
Equal presence also does not mean forcing sentences to have identical lengths. If a translation needs more space, hiding information to preserve symmetry creates another difficulty. Test the composition with content that will actually be used, without assuming every text will match the length of the first title.
Translation and layout need to communicate
Avoid approving a whole piece with placeholder text and treating translation as a simple later swap. The meaning of a headline, service name or instruction may require clarification that changes composition. Translators need to know the use; layout designers need to know which passages must retain context.
One possible practice is maintaining identified content pairs. Each unit brings together source text, the reviewed version in the other language and its intended application. This helps prevent updates in only one version or old passages reappearing in a new piece.
Content unit | What to check in both languages |
Service name | Whether it points to the same offer and uses approved terminology. |
Instruction | Whether it enables the same action. |
Relevant condition | Whether it is present and given suitable space. |
Contact | Whether the destination serves the audience invited by the message. |
Update | Whether the translation follows changes to the source content. |
The table is our own coordination tool, not a description of Pentagram’s internal process. Its function is to give the company a way to review equivalence without requiring the commercial owner to solve linguistic questions alone.
Fictional example: a trade show catalog
Consider the fictional company Serra Oficina preparing a Portuguese and English catalog to present furniture to trade show buyers. The team identifies that an internal finish name does not explain the product outside the company. Before compressing the translated text, it decides to clarify the description in both versions.
It then tests the open catalog and an isolated page sent by message. The exercise reveals different questions: do both versions point to the same item? Can people find the appropriate contact? Does the description remain understandable without the booth representative’s explanation? No commercial result is claimed; this is a review simulation.
A reading trial in two versions
Choose a concrete task, such as identifying a service and requesting information.
Present each version to someone able to review it in the corresponding language.
Ask them to indicate where they found the necessary information.
Record differences in meaning, missing information and navigation questions.
Review content and composition together before replicating the solution across the remaining pieces.
This trial complements specialist review; it neither replaces translation work nor proves understanding across the entire audience. It helps locate material problems before multiplying them. The decision to bring two languages together needs to run through the process, not remain limited to the main image.
If your company will serve audiences in more than one language, bring Briccitly the planned content, channels and people responsible for linguistic review. The visual identity project can start from these situations to define how the brand will be presented in each application. Explore Briccitly’s visual identity service
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