The Tunisian Design Archive documents the design of the Tunisian street — storefronts above all, though not only these. Rather than sorting the material into rigid categories, it tries to keep the eclectic, chaotic, and vibrant character of the country’s visual landscape. The approach is impressionistic rather than academic: the aim is to gather what looks original, or striking, or simply beautiful.
Similar archives exist elsewhere — the Syrian Type Archive and Retreros among them. The Tunisian signs pair vernacular lettering with hand-drawn, sometimes naïve illustration — something also found across Sub-Saharan Africa, in the hand-painted shop signs of West Africa, or, more particularly, Ghana’s hand-painted movie posters.