Muscat, Oman · brand identity

Bin Mohammed Omani Sweets

Halwa, coffee and honey from a house that has poured all three since 1985. An Arabic identity built to be read at a doorway, on a tin and on a card, with nothing translated away.

Founded 1985 · ١٤٢٤Arabic, no English version
A pair of hands holding a carved wooden bowl of Omani halwa, a spoon lifting a piece clear of the surface, against a warm cream wall.

02 · The place

Poured the way Oman has always poured it.

Halwa in a copper pot, coffee from a dallah, honey from the jar on the shelf. The identity had one job: to look like it had been on that roof the whole time.

A man pouring coffee from a long-spouted dallah onto a tray of halwa and cups, on a mud-brick rooftop above a palm oasis and red mountains.

Coffee and halwa on the roof, above the palms.

Dark honey falling in a single thread from a wooden dipper into an open jar, lit from the side against an adobe wall.

Honey from the shelf, poured thick.

1985
Founded, ١٤٢٤ on the card
3
Halwa, coffee and honey
Arabic
One language, no translation

03 · The mark

One gesture, then the trade beneath it.

The name is a single connected stroke in the Diwani manner. Underneath, للحلوى العمانية, for Omani sweets, set small so the gesture never has to share the eye.

Scroll it back and forth. The ink lands right to left, the way the hand moves.

Clearance is the sub-line's own height on every side.

Cream on green, green on cream, gold on either. Three pairs, and the mark never appears in a fourth.

04 · The field

Keep going. The pattern finishes the name.

Ninety-five quatrefoils on a sixteen by nine grid, sparse at the head and solid at the foot. Fill it in and the name is what is left.

05 · The seal

The pattern, bent into a circle.

The stamp for lids, bags and the shop window. The same quatrefoil grid runs across the whole seal and is clipped to a ring, so the border is the pattern itself. Gold sits at the four quarters and nowhere else.

Drawn live, turning once every two minutes.

The circular seal in four colourways, the ring of quatrefoils around the calligraphic mark, green on cream and cream on green.

Four colourways: ring and disc trade places, the gold never moves.

06 · The words

Arabic only, and that was the decision.

There is no English version of this identity. Every line the customer meets is set in Arabic, right to left, and the English exists only here, for you.

عنوان الضيافة العُمانية

The address of Omani hospitality

The line under the name, on the shop front

حلوى و قهوة و عسل

Halwa, coffee and honey

The trade, on the card and the bag

هوية عُمانية أصيلة تحتفي بالمذاق التقليدي وروح الضيافة المتوارثة

An Omani identity that celebrates the traditional taste and the inherited spirit of hospitality

The long line, for the page and the tin sleeve

شارع الخوير، بوشر، مسقط

Al Khuwair Street, Bawshar, Muscat

The address, set small, never above the trade

The house dates itself twice.

1985

The Gregorian year, for anyone who walks in.

١٤٢٤

The Hijri year, on the card, in Arabic numerals.

07 · The colour system

Three colours, and everything they make.

Green, cream and gold are the only measured colours in the identity. The system is what they are allowed to do to each other: six legal pairs, three ladders mixed from the same three inks, and one rule about gold.

Pair 1 of 6

Halwa cream
on frankincense green

Every long read, and the tin

#153A2B · #F0E6D2 · contrast 10.14 to 1

Keep scrolling to run every pair the system allows.

Every other tone is one of the three, mixed with another.

Green#153A2B#3C5949#687B6A#9DA593#CDCAB7
Cream#F0E6D2#E7D9C2#DECAB1#D5BBA0#CCAE91
Gold#C9A227#A58D28#7D7629#525D2A#2E492A
Gold is a guest

It marks the quarters of the seal and one line on a card. It never grounds a paragraph.

Two inks a surface

A piece of paper carries a ground and one ink. The third colour, if it appears, is a dot.

The ladder is for states

Hover, hairline, a sunken row. A new hue is never invented to solve a state.

08 · The paper

Three faces, one grammar.

Pattern, name, contact. Whichever way the card lands on the table it says the same thing, and only one of the three ever carries a phone number.

The business card pattern face as it is drawn in the file: the quatrefoil field in green on cream with the gold pill reading للحلوى العمانية across it.
The pattern face, gaps and all.
The business card name face: the cream calligraphic lockup centred on deep green.
The name face.
The business card contact face: the trade line and the Hijri year at the head, four gold motifs at the centre, the phone number and the Muscat address at the foot.
The contact face, four motifs at the centre.
The three business card faces on adobe: the pattern face, the deep green logo face and the cream contact face, palm shadow across them.

Printed, the pattern face is the one people keep.

Uncoated stock, one green, one gold hit. The quatrefoil is large enough to feel the ink sit in the paper.

09 · In the room

The pattern belongs to the wall, not the page.

Cut into plaster, printed on a bag, stamped on a lid. It was drawn on a grid so it can be made by anyone with a stencil and a steady hand.

A pointed Omani arch cut into a smooth adobe wall, palm shadows falling across it in the afternoon.

Made to be handed over.

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