There has been a surprising delight on every social media platform for the past few days, a picture of a new design idea for the Egyptian identification cards went viral on Facebook and people were excited to get their new identification cards with the colorful pictures, blood types and the authentic Egyptian design, forgetting only one thing, to fact check.
The propagated design was originally made by Tarek Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian senior graphic designer who posted the design “just for sharing a new perspective into the technological advancements the world is seeing, and incorporating it into Egypt’s systems”.
After posting his designs on his personal Facebook account, with the sole purpose of showing people an example of how we could develop our national IDs, it received a high rate of engagement. However, some people took his work and claimed it was the new design for the national identification cards, which then propagated over all social media and became viral.
According to assistant to the minister of foreign affairs and PR manager, Naser Mohy Al-Deen, there will not be any changes to the national IDs.
“The fact that people don’t mind standing in lines again and go through all of the procedures of getting a new ID is very surprising to us, although a digital ID would be a great idea, it will definitely make things easier for us and for the Egyptian citizens but unfortunately, this is false news, there is no such a thing as new IDs.” Said Azza Khalil, an employee in the civil registry office.
Tarek recently moved back to Egypt after living in Saudi Arabia for six years. He hoped to create an initiative that implemented the digitalized governmental transactions similar to Saudi Arabia. He started researching the different methods other countries such as Qatar and Kuwait use in their governmental systems and came up with his own brief that suggested adding colored photos, the blood type, connecting the Arabic and English names written and more simple details that would make many transactions easier.
He also wanted it to be connected to an app using a specific barcode encrypted into the card, and digitizing all transactions and eliminating the need of a physical handheld card, similar to Saudi Arabia where they use an app “Tawakalna” and “Abshir” that contains all required data about the person instead of an ID card.
Then he started designing the card and incorporated the Pharaonic theme into it, as a way of preserving the Egyptian heritage and creating a constant theme.
Tarek had previously designed the National Football team’s airplane, t-shirt and bus designs that went viral on Social Media during the Africa Football Championship, which caught many people’s attention as they hoped it would actually be implemented.
“It was a lack of professionalism from Egyptians and some pages, I was put in a difficult position,” said Tarek, adding that he did not present these ideas to the government since he only creates these designs as a hobby and as a way of showing people how things could be modified to the better.
“People were disappointed to see my posts denying that these designs were actually going to be implemented,” said Tarek.
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