Samar Maakaroun

DESIGNING IDENTITY ACROSS BORDERS

Arab and British in equal measure, Samar Maakaroun is a designer and creative director known for her creatively multilingual approach to design.

Growing up in Beirut before moving to London, Samar is fluent in three languages and two cultures. Her 20+ year career spans branding, digital storytelling, scenography, and typography with a consistent focus on balancing aesthetics, context, and heritage with brand voice and purpose.

In a globalised world, Samar believes in embracing the fluidity and nuances of identity, seeing complexity as a source of creative inspiration and narrative power. Her work explores the space in-between where cultures and languages intersect, integrate, align, or diverge.

Since October 2023, Samar joined Pentagram as Partner. In 2021, she founded Right to Left, a design agency rooted in the dialogue between cultures and typographic traditions. Specialising in designing for hybrid brands, the multidisciplinary team speaks seven languages and crosses three generations, working to fluidly integrate worlds, cultures, and languages across naming, brand strategy, brands systems, and identities. 

An example of their language-hopping, culture-crossing approach manifested in the typographic project “29 Words for 29 Letters,” which explores language, translation, and the fluidity of meaning through design.

Before Right to Left, Samar worked in the design industry for over 15 years, where she led ambitious projects with major studios. Her notable achievements include coining the first integrated destination brand for Dubai with M&C Saatchi (2015); launching Apple’s brand in Arabic across digital, retail, and print (2017); rebranding the Abu Dhabi Media portfolio and later bringing the Diriyah City brand to life with Pentagram (2019).