Gamil Design

Gamil Design Inc. is a product and graphic design company located in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is best known for the fact that many users of Gmail have mistyped and arrived at the company's web site. Gamil also designs products for customers around the world, most of them sports-related.

About the company

Gamil Design began in 1995. Aly Khalifa gave the company his middle name,^[1] Arabic for "handsome", pronounced gah-meel.^[2]

Khalifa's wife Beth joined the company in 1999 shortly after the couple married.^[3] Aly Khalifa, as a product designer, travels to locations as distant as Asia and Europe to take a product from an idea to something that can be produced. Many of the products are sports-related equipment for major companies.^[4]

Gamil Design's major product is Teastick, used to infuse loose tea leaves and sold in over 200 stores.^[1] The idea came from Third Place Coffeehouse. The device had to be small enough to use for one cup of tea, but capable of enduring rough handling. An area company made a prototype, and suppliers were found. It took several months to find a machinist who could make the actual product, and the Gamil employees had to help make it. But the product sold well, with customers in such locations as New York City and Los Angeles.

Finding a manufacturer who could produce a large volume of the product at a low enough price proved difficult. A redesign was tried but did not work as hoped. To make the exact product at the right price, Aly Khalifa had to go to Taiwan, where a friend of his had a bicycle factory that could also make the Teastick. Eventually, it became popular in Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.^[4]

In 2008, Gamila Products, a Gamil Design brand, introduced the copolyester Teastick Gem, made with Eastman Chemical Company Tritan. Copolyester allows heat resistance and durability but covers stainless steel mesh without adhesives. The manufacturing process uses injection molding.^[5][6]

The popular Mila Bikini, which Gamila created for Pacific Design in 2006 for iPod and iPod Nanos, included a polyurethane screen protector that the user can see through, a connection system to attach the iPod, and a cover that can be folded into a stand.^[7]

Another Gamila product, Mila Art Jackets, was introduced as a partner to the Bikini in 2007, also to protect iPods. The art work by Paul Friedrich, Casey Porn, Dale Flattum, Beth Khalifa, Joey Florian and Ben Wilson was intended to promote independent musicians.^[8][9]

In 2007, Gamila introduced the Facemod, a candlestick using the Edgar Rubin optical illusion of two people's profiles.^[10] Using the latest computer technology, Gamila could create a candlestick from any person's photo.^[11]

Gamil has worked with Trek Bicycle Corporation for more than five years, designing such items as gloves, water bottles and bottle cages.^[12] In 2005, Gamil's Trek Batcage bottle cage traveled with Lance Armstrong in the first of three Tours de France.^[13]

Gamil designed the process for making Vilcek Prize trophies, designed by Sagmeister, Inc. of New York City and given by The Vilcek Foundation to persons born in other countries for notable work in science, arts and humanities.^[14][15] The Vilcek trophy won a 2006 award for typographic design.^[16]

Other Gamil work includes the screen print designs for REI Duffel prints.^[17]

Designbox

Aly and Beth Khalifa started Designbox, which meets at Gamil Design, in May 2003.^[18] Considered a "brainstorming collective",^[19] Designbox offers First Friday Art Walks through its art gallery and takes professionals from different design fields such as architecture, landscape architecture, copywriting, interior design and graphic design and works to solve problems of various businesses. In weekly meetings, the members discuss trends and new ideas, and look at the work each company is doing.^[20] Designbox gets involved in the community, such as organizing a community meeting on how to deal with the Dorothea Dix Hospital property when the hospital closes, and the group also makes money by letting businesses use their expertise.^[18]

Gmail

Before 2004, the Gamil Design web site received 3000 hits per month. Then in May 2004, Khalifa received an email from Australia. An engineer from Google had accidentally gone to the Gamil site a number of times, and he asked if the site was experiencing more activity than usual. In fact, the number of hits was twice what it had been.

For two years after the Gmail e-mail service began, many Gmail users typed the web site's name incorrectly and ended up at Gamil Design's site. Eventually, the Internet service provider wanted to charge the company more because of the amount of activity. In Fall 2006, Khalifa finally took advantage of the situation.

He added a page to the company's web site with this message from his wife:

You may have arrived here by misspelling Gmail. We understand. Typing fast is not our strongest skill. But since you've typed your way here, let's share.

As of December 2006, the site was getting 600,000 hits a month.^[1] A year later, the total was one million.^[21]

References

External links

• Official website
• Vilcek Prize
• Facemod