Dare to outgrow the niche that made you - Nada Hesham (Live at All Flows)
6/1/202639 min
Nada Hesham is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of 40Mustaqel, an independent design studio born and based in Cairo, Egypt. Recorded live at All Flows Festival, this conversation moves between identity, rebellion, methodology, and the deep craft of building a studio that refuses to be a factory. ~
Nada grew up in Cairo — an intense, visually chaotic city she describes as a continuous love-hate relationship — in a family of doctors and engineers. She found her way into graphic design not through natural talent, but through the logic of typography: a discipline where obsession and method matter more than innate spark. That belief — that creativity is earned through rigour rather than gifted from above — has shaped everything from how she builds her team to how she approaches a client brief.
Over five years, 40Mustaqel became the go-to studio for Arabic script-led design across the region. But Nada is already restless with that success, pushing her studio into new territory: sculptures, exhibitions, publishing, and a deeper interrogation of what it means to decolonise design beyond the script's surface.
Key takeaways:
- Creativity built on method and obsession outlasts creativity built on talent
- Cairo's visual chaos is not a limitation — it is a creative inheritance worth claiming
- The research phase is where regional and cultural influence truly lives in a project
- Hiring small and intentionally protects the intimacy and quality that makes boutique studios thrive
- Leadership is orchestration — knowing who in your team holds which genius is the real skill
- Decolonising design is a process question, not just a visual one
- Being known for something is the first milestone; outgrowing it is the second
- The Trojan horse strategy — delivering what a client expects while quietly changing what they believe — is how cultural shifts happen
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsNada Hashash· Guest0:00
[gentle music] I wasn't good at drawing classes and things that are liberal artsy leaning, and I found that safety net in typography because there was a logic to it that I can follow. There was method to it, and if you work hard enough, you get it. If you study enough, you get it. It doesn't really require this spark or inspiration or talent that you possess and nobody else does. And to this day, I still believe I'm not the most talented or traditionally creative person, but I get very obsessed about things, and I get very logical, and I have method to how I do things, and I'm very serious about my research and how I approach projects. And I think there is similarity in that and in typography because, again, there... You're not waiting for, "I fell asleep, and I dreamt about this, and the inspiration came from that lucid dream of sorts."
Radim Malinic· Host1:03
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being.