majal — Brand Guideline

Purpose

why majal exists beyond revenue: So that the Kiez has a room of its own: a place for encounter, discussion and collective political education across languages — at a time when open, affordable, community-run places in Berlin are disappearing while the need for them grows. (direct from Konzept §1–2)

Mission

what we do daily: We run a café (10–18h), a multilingual bookshop, an event space and a small media and music studio in one ground-floor room in Neukölln — a low-threshold meeting point where people sit, read, work and meet without obligation, and where readings, films, workshops, concerts and learning groups happen in several languages.

Vision

the city we work toward: Berlin has a long tradition of self-organized cultural places; we add to it. We want a Berlin where multilingual culture is visible and ordinary, where communities exchange rather than coexist, and where a cooperative, solidarity-run space can sustain itself for the long term. (Konzept §1, §7)

Values as commitments

(each value = a practice of learning and unlearning, not an adjective — model: Artisans Co-op; dataset: politics lands as action, not position):

• Feminist — this means: the shelf foregrounds feminist and gesellschaftskritische literature (Konzept §4); programming centers FLINTA* and marginalized voices; we never book all-male panels.
• Anti-racist — this means: multilingual literature is the core of the shop, not an "international" corner. We focus on co-creating the program with the communities of the Kiez, not about them, and we commit to representing them without migration-cliché imagery or exoticizing language.
• Solidarity — this means: Soli pricing at events, nobody policed for not buying, space and co-programming for local initiatives (Konzept §3); we never let the café's commercial logic override the cultural purpose.
• Multilingual — this means: majal is a multilingual space, not a venue with a translation service bolted on; several working languages (Arabic, German, English, Farsi, French, Italian) are simply how the shelf, the captions, the counter and the signage already speak; we never use a language as decoration.
• Accessible / low-threshold — this means: ground floor, wheelchair-accessible, affordable prices, daytime hours for people who don't go to night venues (Konzept §2); we never make participation depend on money, German fluency, or insider knowledge.

Brand essence one-liner

(D1 — locked: option C):

"Ein Wohnzimmer zum Reden, Lesen, Streiten, Organisieren und Ausruhen." / "A living room to talk, read, argue, organize and rest."

The warm, activity-led reading — recasts the مجال (room to move) as verbs. Locked from options A–D; the alternatives are kept in the decisions table for the record.

Positioning statement

For people in Neukölln and beyond who want more than consumption from a public place, majal is the collectively-run, multilingual café-bookshop-stage-studio — unlike chain cafés (no community), monolingual bookshops (no Kiez), and institutional Kulturorte (no everyday warmth). Because we live here, organize here, and rent cooperatively (WBV), majal is of the neighborhood, not just in it. (Konzept §2, §5)

Audience sketches

(short, no persona decks):

1. Kiez regulars — neighbors who want a daytime place to sit, read, work, bring kids; many will never attend an "event" and that's fine (café 10–18h is for them), and some slide from regular to organizer, putting on their own gatherings.
2. Diaspora readers — Arabic- and Farsi-reading Berliners (plus FR/IT/EN) who came up on anti-colonial writers and order them online because no Kiez shop stocks them as core; here that literature is the core, and they should recognize "their" shelf and their language at the counter.
3. The political-cultural scene — like-minded activists, authors, artists and initiatives from the collective's existing networks (Kiezkantine, Solile e.V. …) who share our values and co-create the program (Konzept §3, §5).
4. Makers needing the studio — podcasters, musicians, groups recording talks, people taking music classes. A smaller, less certain revenue stream than venue hire; we are holding it open and will revisit it at the 6-month review (Konzept §2).
5. Event & seminar organizers (venue hire) — NGOs, Vereine, unions, academic, feminist and diaspora groups, and small companies who book the room for a day (seminar, workshop, launch, meeting). A revenue audience, not a community one: they care about capacity, AV, accessibility, daytime availability and price. Every booking agrees that the space's values and code of conduct apply to their event; how far beyond that floor we ask for alignment is set at the first 6-month review (D22). They are reached on the website and by email, never the community feed.

Two offers, one place

majal is two things in one room — a socio-political community space, and a space one can hire. Outside program hours the same room that holds the café and the program is let by the day for seminars and events, and that rent helps carry the political and cultural work the community space is built around (Konzept §2, §6). The brand stays one; the register shifts for the two audiences (see §4), and the hire stance is set in §10.

Neighborhood stance

Arabic script is the storefront vernacular of Sonnenallee; Latin-only minimalism is the visual code of gentrifying cafés. majal is neither: it is a third option — dual-script presence, cooperative rent, Kiez prices — visible in §2 (lockup) and §7 (palette).

The canonical name story

the long telling of the name: rung 4 of the description ladder (§6). Use it verbatim; counter-example Oyoun never told theirs and the press told it for them.

Primary name metaphor

(D2 — locked: combination A + C + D; drives the visual motif in §7 and recurring copy):

The metaphor is the room itself, seen three ways at once: an open field — common ground with no fences, where many languages and politics move freely (Arabic root ج-و-ل: مجال is the place where one roams); a breathing-space — the chance and the pause the city rarely affords, which the daytime café makes literal (Farsi majāl dādan, "to give the chance"); and a circuit — books, tongues, music and people making the jawla, the round, between shelf, counter, stage and studio, and recombining. Field, breath, circulation: ground held open, and movement through it.

Fused from options A, C and D and anchored in the actual space, so every part of the metaphor has a physical proof point on site. Option B ("room for everyone") is dropped; the alternatives are kept in the decisions table for the record.

Casing

(D4 — locked: option C): majal — lowercase, indie — used everywhere including running text, even at sentence start. (Alternatives A Majal / B MAJAL kept in the decisions table for the record. Avoid the umlaut spelling "Majäl" — that's how the Berlin jazz trio writes it; see naming note.)

Pronunciation guide

"majal — ma-JAAL, stress on the long second syllable (rhymes with the start of 'Taj Mahal')." The J is an English j, not a German y. Arabic majāl and Farsi majâl are pronounced effectively the same — the word belongs to both. (goes on the website /about and in the press kit)

Naming note

(from the research — decide and act early): مجال / majal is usable but not distinctive in SWANA cultural branding. The one real local clash is the Berlin-based jazz trio MAJÄL (oud + guitar + percussion, actively touring) — relevant because of our media and music studio and music events. Mitigations: lock the "majal Berlin" / "majal Neukölln" construction for SEO and keep a descriptor in the lockup so the name never travels naked (see D5, D10). Name assets are locked and live: the handle @majal.community and the domain majal.community — one string across web and social; "community" doubles as the descriptor, so the name never travels naked anywhere it appears. Use the same handle on every new channel. Other same-word orgs (Majal.org digital-rights NGO; Majal Space in Giza; the Majal creator app) are different sectors or countries — low confusion risk.

Script hierarchy of the logo

(D5 — locked: option C — the most-copied asset; it silently announces whose room this is):

Arabic-led, Latin secondary — مجال large, majal small. The strongest diaspora-first signal; the storefront speaks Sonnenallee's vernacular first (§3). Mitigate the legibility risk for non-Arabic-reading passers-by and press: the Latin "majal" and the descriptor (D10) always travel with the mark — the name never appears in Arabic alone (see naming note).

(Alternatives A equal dual-script / B Latin-led kept in the decisions table for the record; the dataset leaned A — the collective chose the stronger statement.)

• Design note: both scripts want a wide, calm, baseline-led lockup — مجال is horizontal with a dip-and-lift rhythm (the low jīm bowl, then the tall final lām), and lowercase "majal" is equally flat and horizontal. Set them on a shared baseline; let the jīm descender drop below it as the one expressive break. The horizontality itself pictures a field — on-brand for the locked D2 metaphor.

Personality traits with guardrails

• Warm but not cutesy — hospitality, no kitsch, no infantilizing emoji walls.
• Political but not preachy — the program is the statement; the feed is its window. Politics lands through whom we invite, who shows up, what we shelve and what it costs — never as slogans in a caption: if a post reads like a position paper, replace it with the event, the guest or the shelf that proves the same point (dataset: Tía Chucha's purchasable anti-ICE shelf at 17× average vs. flopping commemorations).
• Multilingual but never performative — a language appears because someone speaks it here, not as garnish.
• Playful but reliable — jokes in captions, fixed slots in the calendar (dataset: Riwaq's in-jokes drive comments; habituated schedule-spam kills feeds).
• Collective but personal — "we" as default, real first names and faces in people-content (dataset: a named staff pick outperforms anonymous book posts 25–80×).

Tone matrix

(voice constant, tone shifts):

Two registers, one voice

community and front-of-house comms are warm and political (the traits above). The venue-hire register — the rate card, inquiry replies, the venue page (§3, §10) — is the same brand but leads with reliability and facts: capacity, access, AV, price, availability. Same values (they are a selling point for the right renters), less politics up front; professional-warm, never corporate-cold.

Transcreation rules per language

(voice traits constant; texts transcreated, not translated):

• German: du, never Sie, in all front-of-house comms.

• Farsi: conversational register, not bureaucratic; FA wordings drafted by the Farsi speakers of the collective.
• QA rule: a text is approved for brand fit, not just fluency — by a speaker of that language in the collective.

Epithet string

the fixed descriptor after the name (D10 — resolved: situational set): rung 2 of the description ladder (§6). The voice rules here still govern it — see banned words.

Banned / chosen words

(Berlin-specific; word choice carries funding politics — Hopscotch refuses "decolonial" in the German context, Oyoun's funding conflict shows the stakes):

• Never: "Integration", "Migrationshintergrund" (use: mehrsprachig, diasporisch, or name the language/community), "exotisch", "orientalisch", "multikulti", "Geheimtipp", "Brennpunkt".
• Always: communities by their own names; "Kiez" over "Standort"; "Raum" over "Location".

Inclusive language commitments

anti-ableist (no "blind für…", "lahm"), anti-appropriative (no AAVE/borrowed slang as decoration), gender-inclusive per D8, plain language where the information matters (access, prices, dates).

Messaging pillars

(become the social content pillars; each with proof points):

1. Building the place, together — the founding journey, milestones, setbacks, the room itself. (Dataset: existential first-person news about the place is the #1 genre everywhere.)
2. Literature across languages — the multilingual shelf as the offer commercial bookshops don't make (Konzept §4); staff picks with names and faces; the podcast from the studio.
3. Politics as practice in the Kiez — curated shelves as statements, solidarity events, co-programming with local initiatives; concrete, dated, embodied — never commemorative-abstract.
4. Joy & hospitality — food, music nights, Sprachcafé, celebrations; the cake that makes the theory credible. (Dataset: Haymarket's bake sale beat their star-author panels.)
5. (optional fifth — → D13: keep or fold into 2/3?) Learning in common — workshops, skill-sharing, learning groups, storytelling as collective political education (Konzept §1, §3).

Politics → proof points

(every adjective maps to an enforceable practice):

• Feminist/critical shelf focus → the published curation rule
• Solidarity → the Soli sentence on every event + free formats (Sprachcafé)
• Anti-racist/multilingual → several languages on shelf, counter, captions (D6) + co-programming with communities
• Collective → no boss, no owner: Verein + collective of 4–5 runs everything (Konzept §5)

Tagline

parked — decide after the visual identity exists (the essence one-liner, D1, is locked in §1).

A fixed set of descriptions per length — pick the rung that fits the space and the variant that fits the situation; never improvise a new one.

1 · Name alone

majal / مجال (lockup per D5)

Used: logo, stamp, book spine, favicon, profile pictures.

2 · Epithet string

the fixed descriptor after the name; a fixed set, picked per situation (D10 — resolved: situational set).

Used: window lettering, A-board, press mentions, event listings, imprints, partner pages, Instagram bio.

• A — descriptive.
  DE: "mehrsprachige Buchhandlung, Café & Veranstaltungsraum in Neukölln"
  EN: "multilingual bookshop, café & event space in Neukölln"
  Use for: window lettering and A-board (with the lockup, per D5), grants and funding applications, official listings, press boilerplate.
• B — politics first.
  DE: "feministische, antirassistische, mehrsprachige Buchhandlung & Café in Neukölln" (Café con Libros / Oyoun model)
  Use for: scene contexts where the politics open doors — political program partners, movement media.
• C — Instagram bio.
  Two rotating versions, each one Latin + one non-Latin script:
  Version 1 — DE + AR:
  "Ein unabhängiger Raum auf der Sonnenallee – für Kultur, Austausch, gemeinsames Lernen und Collective Care."
  "مساحة مستقلة في زوننآلي – للثقافة والتبادل والتعلّم المشترك والرعاية الجماعية."
  Version 2 — EN + FA:
  "An independent space on Sonnenallee — for culture, exchange, learning together and collective care."
  "فضایی مستقل در زونن‌آله – برای فرهنگ، تبادل، یادگیری جمعی و مراقبت جمعی."
  Use for: the Instagram bio; rotate version 1 ↔ 2. AR/FA drafts — to be approved by the language speakers of the collective (§4 QA rule).

3 · Boilerplate

50–100 words, DE first; opens with epithet variant A.

Used: press releases, funding applications, partner sites, website footer.

majal ist [Epithet A]. Ein Erdgeschossraum in Neukölln: tagsüber Café (10–18 Uhr), an den Wänden Bücher in mehreren Sprachen — internationale, feministische und gesellschaftskritische Literatur —, abends Lesungen, Filme, Workshops, Konzerte und ein kleines Medien- und Musikstudio. Man kann hier auch einfach nur sitzen, lesen, arbeiten — niemand muss etwas kaufen. Getragen wird der Raum von einem Kollektiv aus Community-Organisator:innen und einem gemeinnützigen Verein für Kultur und Literatur — und von den Nachbar:innen, die ihn nutzen.

(EN + AR + FA versions follow once D8/D9 are fixed.)

4 · The full name story

use this telling verbatim.

Used: website /about, press kit.

Typography requirement

every script must read native — faces designed for Arabic and for Farsi, not Latin fonts with bolted-on glyphs; Arabic and Farsi may use different typefaces; Farsi glyph coverage (پ چ ژ گ) is mandatory; faux-oriental Latin display faces are banned; max two typefaces per graphic. (The choice of faces belongs to the design phase — the designer proposes, native readers in the collective verify.)

Photography principles

the real room and real people; warm light; faces large enough to read at thumbnail size; candid as the default — posed portraits of staff, hosts and event makers welcome, the stiff group line-up is what we avoid; never migration/poverty clichés, never stock. People photographed with dignity and consent — community members as hosts and protagonists, not subjects.

Type-as-image

reserved for values statements and existential announcements (dataset: it spikes for conviction, dies for logistics). Event logistics live in layouts, not headline graphics.

Accessibility

WCAG AA contrast minimum in all palette combinations — a brand value, not an afterthought.

Templates needed

(only these, one system): event poster A3/A4 · Instagram post + story (event, recap, statement, staff-pick variants) · menu/price board · shelf talkers · window/A-board signage · podcast cover.

Funding transparency

once a year, an open "wie sich majal trägt" post/letter (income mix, what members made possible). (Dataset: existential institutional news is the highest-engagement genre — transparency is brand-building here, not risk.)

Venue hire — the space as revenue

(the second offer; see the audience in §3 and the register in §4): Outside program hours the room is rented for one-day seminars, workshops, launches and meetings. It is structural revenue alongside café, books, events and membership (Konzept §6), and it pays toward the cultural mission. Two things are set here — how the offer is branded, and who we rent to.

• Brand stewards: 2 named members (TBD at founding) — they maintain this doc and the templates; they are not an approval bottleneck.
• Consensus required (whole collective): name & lockup, epithet string, values & commitments (§1), political statements in majal's name, pricing model, this document's major revisions.
• Free within the rules (any member, no sign-off): daily posts, event texts, recaps, menu copy — as long as they follow §4 (voice, language lead, banned words) and use the templates.
• Review: every 6 months, 1-hour collective session; version + date at the top of this file. Participatory ("Brand IDEA": integrity, democracy, affinity), not policing.

Goals, in priority order

1. Community & mission — make majal known and trusted in the Kiez and the diaspora scene; the place as a character people follow.
2. Event attendance — fill the readings, films, concerts, Sprachcafé and learning groups.
3. Venue revenue — bookings for the rentable side (D21, D22). Different audience, different register: website + email, never the community feed.

Membership and book/café sales follow trust — they ride on goal 1, they aren't campaigns.

Audiences

• Kiez regulars, diaspora readers, the political-cultural scene → Instagram + Telegram
• Members, supporters, the committed core → Email
• Venue-hire organizers (B2B) → Website + Email only
• Press and "is this real?" searchers → Website

One brand, two registers

community channels speak warm and political; hire touchpoints speak facts-first (capacity, access, price). Never sell rentals on the community feed; never run mission posts through the rate card.

Instagram — the shop window.

Handle locked and live: @majal.community. Recaps with real faces, place-news, joy, named staff picks. Caption leads in the event's language (D6), second language under (D7). Bio: rotating two-script pair (§6). The channel rule: the program is the statement; the feed is its window — no position papers, no slogan captions. Keep off it: schedule grids, logistics dumps, rental sales.

Telegram — the direct line.

No algorithm, instant, two-way; a primary channel for Arabic- and Farsi-speaking Berlin. Day-of reminders, changes, quick drops, a regulars' group. Only when there's something to say.

Email — the owned audience.

Monthly digest, founding journey, the annual transparency letter (§10), member updates; the inbox where hire inquiries land. High substance, low frequency.

Website — the home base.

Domain locked and live: majal.community. The name story told properly (§6 — tell it before the press does), the access block, program/calendar, membership signup, press kit, the venue-hire page + rate card, Impressum/DSGVO. Reference and conversion, not a feed.

One event, four jobs

website listing → IG announcement (a teaser, not the flyer) → Telegram + story reminder day-of → IG recap within 48h → email digest folds it in.

Pillars (§5)

building the place · literature across languages · politics as practice · joy & hospitality · learning in common. No new ones here.

The rules that shape the feed

• Recaps and place-news lead, announcements follow — that's what performs, and it's the proof the room is alive.
• Fewer, better posts. Frequency correlates negatively with engagement. No daily quota.
• Schedules live in Stories and the calendar, never the grid.
• Type-as-image only for conviction (values, existential news), never logistics.
• "What is majal" texts come from the description ladder (§6) — never improvised.

Post types — the four templates

(the design deliverables, defined in the Design Brief; every grid post is one of these):

• Event announcement — title, date, one picture or a flat ground; a teaser, not the co-host's flyer.
• Recap — photos from the event after it happened, in the small recap frame. Also carries place-news, joy, behind-the-scenes.
• Statement card — purely typographic, one sentence fills the tile, dual-script. Values and existential news.
• Book-quote card — a sentence from a shelf book, author cited; may carry the book or other visuals. Also carries staff picks.

No dedicated story templates — posts plus hand-written story text carry us.

Per language

each post has a lead language and a writer/approver who speaks it — approved for brand-fit, not just fluency.

Accessibility

alt text, video captions, the access block on every event post, logistics never trapped inside an image-only graphic.

The post plan

(rhythm, not quota):

• Phase 0 — before opening: the founding journey as a serial — lease signed, build-out, shelves in, sign up. The #1 genre in the research, and majal has a year of it for free. 1–2 posts a week.
• Opening: three set pieces — the name story (pinned), the logo reveal, the storefront at golden hour.
• Weekly: 2–3 grid posts max — one program post, one place/people/shelf post, slack for the spontaneous. Never two announcements back-to-back.
• Per event: announcement as a short portrait of the guest, never a date/time flyer → reminder day-of → recap within 48h with the full room and real faces. The recap is routinely the stronger post.
• Monthly: one program-overview post at most, the digest, one batch-production session.
• Rotation guard: three event posts in a row → the next is the room, a person or the shelf.

Graphic guidelines — how a majal post looks.

Every repeat winner commits fully to one of two grammars — a real photo of the room mid-use, or a fully designed poster — and nearly every underperformer sits in between (a photo with an info block on top, a template with the date swapped). The board shows both grammars on real winners; the full rules and evidence sit beneath it. The complete reference read lives in Graphic Research.

The two grammars — on real winners

photo grammar — the room mid-use

4.8× — the full room, four words 4× — a music moment, not a flyer 1,105 likes — sewing club mid-action 1.9× — heritage on stage

candid · vertical · from inside the activity · warm light · bodies & hands · text ≤ small lockup

poster grammar — total design

4.2× — retro طرب collage 3.2× — saturated field, giant type 2.2× — bespoke Ambedkar illustration 1.6× — archival B&W figure

one flat saturated field · giant display type as the visual · 1–2 accent inks · one bespoke element per event

the middle — photo + info block, or a template with the date swapped. dies every time.

55 likes from 16.5k — type dumped on a photo✕ 42 likes from 33k — the fill-in template✕ 0.6× — the pale logistics card✕

The failure modes — what never to post (each a real underperformer; the caption names the anti-pattern)

object, no people — croissant engagement-bait, ⅙ of average✕ anonymous series — #fridayfiction, book without a person: 3 likes✕ schedule on the grid — the weekly program listing: 14 likes✕ reminder template — “TOMORROW: workshop”, no new material: 11 likes✕ low contrast + wellness-vague — yellow on yellow, bottom of the page✕ gimmick edit — kaleidoscope-mirrored DJ still: 16 likes from 11k✕ vague tease — refused to name the film: 23 likes✕ clip-art collage — borders, 4+ fonts, nobody in frame: half average✕

Palette — sampled from the winning images (the logo trio is locked as primary — this is the evidence base for the supporting tones + rotation logic the designer builds)

photos live here — shoot for this light

tungsten amber#C9822F the light photos live in

terracotta#B4502E photo pole · accents

kilim red#8E2B2B grounding accent

olive#6E7F49 calm secondary

warm cream#F2E7D3 grounds · statement cards

posters take one field from here + one or two accents — the pale mixes in between are the losing zone

cobalt#2B4EA2 poster field

forest#1F6B4C poster field

burnt orange#C65A1E field · accent

magenta#B0347C rare loud accent

sun yellow#F3C93F lockup · highlight

ink#1B1B1B statement text

What a majal post looks like — one mock per grammar

مجالmajal

photo grammar. The room carries it; on the image only the lockup. (stand-in photo)

مساء مفتوح

offener
abend

so · 19:00 · majal, sonnenallee

poster grammar. Type is the visual — IBM Plex Sans (Arabic) Bold on one field color, one accent.

niemand muss etwas kaufen.

مجال majal

statement card. Serif on a flat ground (Amiri + Lora) — conviction only, never logistics.

WORKSHOP
Datum · 19:00 Uhr
Anmeldung erforderlich · 5€
Ort · Info · Link in Bio

✕

the middle. If the photo needs an info block, the photo can't carry the post. Never.

Type — working choice until the design phase (brand §7 fixes the requirement: every script reads native, Arabic/Farsi may differ, Farsi glyphs, no faux-oriental)

مجال مفتوح  offene räume 123

IBM Plex Sans Arabic + IBM Plex Sans — workhorse

lockup · info lines · stories · poster type in Bold/Black

مجال  ein Wort, das Raum gibt

Amiri + Lora — statement voice

statement cards · quotes · never body text

Staying out of the costume-change trap.

The recurring failure of venues like ours: every post gets a new "outfit," so recognition never compounds. Six cheap rules:

1. Lock the templates before opening, not per event. An event changes photo, title, date — never font, palette, layout. DARNA's menu cards prove a volunteer team can hold a system; Uncle Bobbie's shows the alternative — a new costume per flyer.
2. One motif that survives everything. The مجال / majal lockup plus one recurring gesture — every asset, same corner, same size (Subkontinent's star-scatter keeps even wild one-offs on-brand).
3. A written partner-material rule. Partner flyers are never posted raw — restyled or framed in the majal template. Even disciplined feeds slip when others supply the art.
4. Fonts travel into reels. A strong poster system next to default iOS captions loses the brand in the furthest-reaching format (DARNA's video portraits). Whoever cuts reels gets the brand font installed on day one.
5. One gatekeeper, not one designer. Anyone posts from templates; one rotating person holds veto on anything off-template (Refuge's discipline vs flyer chaos — both small teams).
6. Seasonal change as the sanctioned outlet. Rotate one accent per season/program cycle (Missy's per-issue color), template untouched.

The template set + these rules ship together as part of the brand kit (roadmap phase 4). The visual evidence lives in Graphic Research.

• Response times: a stated, realistic target (DMs/comments ~24h weekdays; access and booking questions same-day). Slow-but-real beats fast-and-fake.
• Criticism: reply once, in public, in plain human voice; never delete criticism; move back-and-forth to DM after one reply (also the crisis rule — Crisis Communication).
• Reposting & consent: repost with permission; identifiable people require consent (Recht am eigenen Bild / DSGVO). Keep a simple record.
• Collaboration: co-hosts and authors are tagged and credited as partners, not décor; never platform against the values (§1). Name the humans (D12).

The org-level policy lives in the Safer Space & Code of Conduct; the channels enforce its online edge.

• Published netiquette: a short pinned note on each channel — what the space is, how we talk, what isn't welcome.
• Reply: genuine questions, good-faith disagreement, criticism of us.
• Hide/delete: hate speech, slurs, doxxing, spam. Never delete: criticism, awkward questions, complaints.
• Nobody moderates a pile-on alone; loop in a second person.
• Online and on-site are one incident with two surfaces — same policy, same reporting path.

• Responsibilities — name people, not roles: who shoots, who writes (per language), who posts, who answers DMs, who holds the passwords (shared password manager, 2FA, recovery owned by ≥2 people). Day-posts are free within the rules; statements in majal's name need a steward.
• Planning: a light monthly session (batch recaps, the digest) — not a rigid calendar.
• Measurement — deliberately light: qualitative signal only (are recaps landing, are the right people showing up); a 20-minute social review inside the 6-month brand review.

Vanity-metric dashboards · follower goals · daily quotas · paid ads (until there's a reason) · a separate venue brand · being on every platform.

Pillars (§5) · description ladder & epithet set (§6 / D10) · voice and language rules (§4 / D6 / D7 / D11) · the program-is-the-statement rule (§4) · lowercase "majal" (D4) · lockup (D5) · name metaphor (D2) · visual & photography rules (§7) · membership framing (§10 / D20) · venue-hire gate (D21, D22) · authorship & press contact (D12).

S1 channel set · S2 netiquette + moderation roster · S3 (deferred) venue metrics · the per-language writer/approver rotation · the spokesperson (= D12 press contact) · response-time targets.

• majal (مجال) — "room to move" in Arabic/Farsi. Café + multilingual bookshop + event space + small media/music studio. Berlin-Neukölln, collective-run. Six languages: AR · DE · EN · FA · FR · IT.
• The feed must feel dynamic / trendsetting and warm / like home — at the same time. That tension is the brief.
• Everything you design will be filled in by non-designers, in six languages, for years. Robust beats spectacular.

We want a living system, not frozen templates: fixed elements that make every post recognizably majal (the mark, the type voice, the layout bones), plus deliberate room for change — colors that rotate over time, formats that evolve. Never the same card twice, never a feed that looks random.

Deliverables — the post templates, in order of importance (hover the linked posts for real examples):

1. Event announcement — the main format. Post-size, bilingual, a photo variant and a flat variant. Logistics live in the layout, never in headline graphics. Refuge's flat type posters are a good model.
2. Recap frame — a small, always-the-same visual marker for photo posts — a corner logo chip, a colored border, a little sticker: something that says "this is majal" without covering the photo. The after-the-event post is our highest-performing genre: Riwaq's full room, Jiwar's music night.
3. Statement card — purely typographic: one sentence fills the tile on a flat ground, dual-script. No imagery — the type is the image.
4. Book-quote card — a sentence from a book on our shelves, author cited. Different from the statement card: this one may carry visuals — the book itself, the shelf, an illustration.
5. Profile assets — the profile picture (logo v2, see below) and highlight covers.
6. The mini-kit — color tokens, type spec, and a one-page photo style guide, so the system survives after you.

These templates carry all our content — recaps, staff picks, place-news, solidarity spotlights, joy posts — details in Social. No dedicated story templates for now — posts plus hand-written story text carry us.

Three survival rules

• Name: majal — lowercase, always, even at sentence start.
• Logo:

We need a logo v2 from you: (1) an Instagram profile picture that works — the wordmark is too wide for a small circle, and the current round container ends up as a circle sitting inside Instagram's circle; (2) more contrast — terracotta on cream is too soft at small sizes; (3) drop the arch container — the arch is not a brand device, we've dropped it everywhere.

• Handle + domain: @majal.community · majal.community — one string everywhere.
• Type constraints: every script must read native — faces designed for Arabic and for Farsi, not Latin fonts with bolted-on glyphs. Arabic and Farsi can be different typefaces. No faux-oriental Latin display faces. Max two typefaces per graphic.
• Photography principles: the real room and real people · warm light · unposed as the default — people mid-conversation, mid-pour, mid-page · posed portraits are welcome when they're portraits — staff, hosts, event makers, authors — what we avoid is the stiff group line-up · dignity and consent · never stock, never migration/poverty clichés.

• Palette. The logo trio are the primary colors — #E37A5C terracotta · #2F6A58 deep green · #EDE5CD cream — the base, not a cage. Build the supporting tones and card grounds around them, and design the rotation logic: accents should change over time so the feed never gets boring, but the change must feel authored, not random (per season, per program cycle — your proposal). The palette job includes photos: define a photo treatment — one consistent warm tone, as a reusable preset or Canva adjustment settings — so every photo sits in the same color world as the cards. What the research says: warm saturated palettes win; pale low-contrast cards are the signature of weak feeds. WCAG AA contrast in every text/background combination is the one hard constraint.
• Bilingual layout logic. Probably two scripts on one asset; the hierarchy and how they share space is yours. The two best models we found — hover the names to see the posts: Jiwar — Latin caps interlocked with large Arabic calligraphy at equal scale; DARNA — one shape, two scripts (twin rosette seals).
• The text faces. Your call entirely. We lean toward different faces for Arabic and Farsi if that's what native readers respond to; run your picks past our native readers. The constraints in Fixed (read native, max two per graphic) are the only limits.

Everything visual we collected lives in Graphic Research — 14 Instagram accounts read image by image, distilled into 7 cross-cutting trends with real example posts. Start with the trends, then the map of where every account sits on the warm↔dynamic / photo↔graphic axes.

• Tooling: Canva. Templates are delivered as Canva files the collective can maintain.

This is one policy with five audiences: guests in the café and shop, people at our events, people in the recording studio, people on our online channels, and organizers who hire the room. The values are the same for all of them; the specifics differ. A short one-page version (the "in brief") is displayed in the space and pinned on our channels; this is the full text behind it.

It is published in all six majal languages — Arabic, German, English, Farsi, French, Italian — and in plain language. If you need a version you don't see, ask any staff member. (Oyoun publishes its awareness policy in eight languages including Arabic and Farsi — six is our floor, not a stretch.)

majal is a feminist, anti-racist café, multilingual bookshop, event space and small recording studio in Neukölln, run by a collective and a gemeinnütziger Verein (brand.md §1).

majal is a public space, so we can never promise it is a completely safe space. What we commit to is making it a safer space — safer than the everyday world, built and maintained on purpose, together.

Safer Space — DE: „majal ist ein Safer Space: kein vollständig sicherer Raum, sondern einer, an dem wir aktiv und gemeinsam daran arbeiten, sicherer als die Alltagswelt zu sein." EN: "majal is a Safer Space: not a completely safe space, but one where we actively and collectively work to be safer than the everyday world."

Safety is not the same as comfort.

It is often uncomfortable to challenge ignorance and oppression. Safety is when people's dignity and bodily integrity are affirmed — also during difficult conversations. We protect safety, not comfort. (framing from Bluestockings.)

This is a living document. Our understanding will keep changing; so will this text.

This policy applies to everyone in majal's spaces and in connection with majal — visitors, members, staff, volunteers, artists and speakers, studio users, sponsors, and anyone who hires the room — across the café and shop, events, the studio, our online channels, and one-on-one communication tied to majal. Hiring the space, performing, or attending an event means agreeing to it.

• Consent first. Ask before physical contact — including hugs. Only a clear yes is a yes; no means no. („Nur ein klares Ja heißt Ja.")
• Don't assume. Don't assume anyone's gender, pronouns, sexual orientation, race, religion, language or background. Use the names and pronouns people ask you to use.
• Make room. Notice how much space you take up — "step up" when you've been quiet, "step back" when you've been heard. Don't talk over people.
• Challenge the behaviour, respect the person. Assume good faith unless there's reason not to; that lets people learn. If someone tells you something you did caused harm, listen first and don't get defensive — intention doesn't always lessen impact.
• Mind the languages. Six languages live here; don't use a language to exclude, mock, or talk about someone present.

We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment or violence — in any of our languages — including:

• Racism in all its forms — anti-Black racism, antisemitism, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Roma and Sinti racism, anti-Asian racism, and racism against migrants and refugees;
• Sexism and misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, cissexism, queer-hostility;
• Ableism, classism, fatphobia, ageism, lookism, colourism;
• Trans- or sex-work-exclusionary ideologies.

And specifically, as harassment: unwelcome sexual attention or contact; deliberate misgendering or use of a rejected ("dead") name; slurs; threats, intimidation, stalking; harassing or non-consensual photography/recording; doxxing or publishing someone's private information; sustained disruption of events or conversation; non-consensual outing.

Discrimination can be unintentional or unconscious.

We take perceived discrimination seriously too — the point is the harm, not whether it was meant. (named-list modelled on She Said; "perceived discrimination" from Oyoun.)

Two principles, borrowed from the Berlin Awareness tradition, decide how we respond:

• Definitionsmacht (the affected person defines it). Whether a boundary was crossed is decided by the person affected — not by a bystander, not by "both sides." It is not the intention that counts, but the effect.
• Parteilichkeit (we take sides). We are not neutral mediators. We believe people who are affected and stand in solidarity with them. Their safety comes before the comfort of the person who caused harm.

DE: „Ob eine Grenze überschritten wurde, bestimmt die betroffene Person. Wir glauben Betroffenen und stehen solidarisch an ihrer Seite." EN: "Whether a boundary was crossed is decided by the affected person. We believe those affected and stand in solidarity with them."

Harm is not all the same.

Not all harm is violence, not all conflict is abuse, not all hurt is intentional. For everyday harm we "call in" — naming what hurt and how to do better. For violence, the safety of the affected person comes first, always.

A safer space is not a space without disagreement, and criticising majal is always welcome — we will never hide or delete a comment, or push someone out, simply for disagreeing with us or criticising us.

The following are not harassment and will never be treated as such:

• setting a boundary ("leave me alone," "I'm not discussing this with you");
• criticising racist, sexist, queer-hostile or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions — including ours;
• communicating in a "tone" someone doesn't find congenial.

At the same time, we reserve the right to reject a complaint we believe is made in bad faith — for example, a report meant to silence legitimate criticism. (criticism-protection + bad-faith clause from Geek Feminism / GNOME.)

How to reach us.

Speak to any staff member, or to the awareness team at events (at events the team is visibly marked — → confirm the marker, e.g. coloured vests or a badge — and there is a quiet Ruheraum / retreat corner you can go to). You can also write to → confirm mailbox: awareness@majal.community — anonymously if you prefer, and also after the fact. → confirm: whether we adopt a discreet codeword scheme (the Berlin standard is "Ist Luisa hier?", staff-trained).

What we promise.

• We believe you. Your perception is not put on trial.
• Confidentiality (Vertraulichkeit). What you tell us is treated confidentially. An anonymous report stays anonymous.
• You decide. We take no step about what happens next without your consent. You set the pace.
• Support. We listen, we don't demand justification, and we can point you to specialist services — → confirm local referrals, e.g. LesMigraS, ReachOut Berlin, the Antidiskriminierungsstelle.

Behaviour that breaks this code has consequences. We work up a ladder, and the person is told why at each step:

1. A conversation — we name the behaviour and explain why it's a problem.
2. A warning — a clear request to stop or change, with consequences named.
3. Asked to leave the event or the space.
4. A ban (Hausverbot) — temporary or permanent, on the basis of our Hausrecht.

Bright line

any physical or sexual assault results in immediate removal from the space, and may be reported to the authorities. (ladder = Contributor Covenant + Safe the Dance; assault line = Bluestockings.)

Anyone asked to stop is expected to comply immediately. A ban rests on behaviour, never on who someone is — that would itself be discrimination (and is limited by the AGG).

Our online rules are the same values, applied to comments and messages (the operational detail lives in the Communications plan's moderation rules):

• We welcome discussion, questions and criticism — and we do not delete a comment just because it disagrees with us. When you disagree, challenge the argument, not the person.
• We hide or delete: racist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, sexist, queer- or trans-hostile, ableist or otherwise discriminatory comments; threats, harassment, doxxing; spam and advertising. Repeat offenders may be blocked. Illegal content we report to the platform and, where necessary, to the authorities.
• When we remove something, we may leave a short note saying a comment was removed for breaking these rules — so moderation is visible, not silent. (escalation ladder + transparency note from Amadeu Antonio Stiftung; "argument not author" from Goethe-Institut.)

Online and on-site are one space.

Harassment at an event can surface in our comments; a pile-on online can show up at the door. We treat them as one situation with two surfaces (crisis handling: see the Crisis Communication plan).

We want majal to be as accessible as we can make it, and we would rather tell you exactly what to expect than promise more than we can keep. (honesty principle from Oyoun & Wellcome Collection.)

• Getting in — → confirm the real facts: e.g. "the café is reached step-free from the street," or "there is one ~Xcm step and a portable ramp — please ask." Same honesty for the toilet and any lift.
• All-gender toilet — → confirm availability and whether it's step-free.
• Stille Stunde / Quiet Hour — a fixed low-stimulation hour (no music, dimmed lights) for anyone who finds a busy space overwhelming (set the weekday/time).
• Content notes — at events, we flag in advance where a topic may be distressing, so you can decide for yourself whether to attend. We say "content note," not "trigger warning."
• Scent-aware — please come as scent-free as you can; avoid perfume and strongly scented products. We know a fully scent-free room isn't always possible — do what you can.
• A quiet corner to step away to.
• Money is not a barrier — Soli pricing, pay what you can; no one is turned away for lack of funds.
• Language & plain language — this policy is available in all six languages and in einfache Sprache; ask for the version you need.

majal rents the room to external organizers (brand.md §3, §10 / D21–D22). Hiring it comes with this code attached. By booking, you agree that:

• majal's values and this Code of Conduct apply to your event in full.
• You are responsible for the conduct of your speakers, participants and guests, and for making sure they can see and understand this policy — share it in your invitation and display the short version at your event.
• You name one person responsible for the event and present throughout.
• We reserve the right to refuse or cancel any booking we feel conflicts with our values — and we especially welcome events that uphold them.
• Accepting a booking does not mean majal endorses the views or activities of the organizer.
• Confirming the booking confirms you have read and accept these conditions.

(model: UK Quaker "ethical letting" terms — Horsham, Edinburgh, Colchester; organizer-responsible-for-guests from Univ. of Dundee; "must display & brief" from Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op.)

This policy is reviewed every 6 months with the brand doc (brand.md §10), and whenever an incident teaches us something. Tell us what's missing or wrong — to → confirm mailbox: awareness@majal.community. Version and date live at the top.

Neukölln peers: She Said (feminist bookshop — "safer not safe," enumerated -isms, Quiet Hour), Oyoun (decolonial cultural centre — multilingual awareness, honest accessibility, anonymous awareness@). Bookshops: Bluestockings (safety≠comfort, step up/step back, assault bright line), Firestorm. Berlin Awareness: b-aware, rundum.club, fzs, MW:M / Most Wanted Music, Safe the Dance, Diversity Arts Culture Berlin; concepts — Definitionsmacht, Parteilichkeit, Hausrecht, FLINTA\*, "Luisa ist hier." Codes of conduct: Contributor Covenant (consequence ladder), Berlin Code of Conduct, Geek Feminism / GNOME (criticism protection + bad-faith clause). Online moderation: Amadeu Antonio Stiftung (hide→delete→report→police + transparency note), Goethe-Institut, Amnesty, DOMiD. Access: Oyoun, Wellcome Collection, QWOCMAP (scent), Almeida (content notes), Sins Invalid. Rental: Quaker meeting houses (Horsham, Edinburgh, Colchester), Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op.

Name the kind of crisis first; the response follows from the tier.

1. Operational — a cancelled event, a power cut, a burst pipe, an act that doesn't show. Annoying, not a crisis: fix it, tell people plainly, move on. No crisis machinery.
2. Reputational — a serious complaint, an accusation against the space or a member, an online pile-on / shitstorm.
3. External-political — a funding attack, a press hit-piece, organized harassment over a stance or a booking.
4. Safety — harassment, violence or an incident in the room or at an event. People first, communication second.

The same sequence every time, so nobody has to improvise under fire:

1. Whoever sees it first says it internally — in the stewards' channel, with a screenshot or a one-line account. Nobody replies publicly. Not even to defend us. Especially not to defend us.
2. Spokesperson + one steward (not the whole collective) look at it and name the tier.
3. Scheduled posts are paused. A cheerful book post landing mid-storm reads as tone-deafness.
4. Choose the track: handle quietly (most tier 1–2) or respond publicly (see the playbooks below). Public response has one author — the spokesperson.
5. If anyone was harmed (tier 4): the awareness team leads and the affected people are contacted first — before anything is posted. Comms follows the room, never the other way around.
6. Document from the start: screenshots, times, account names. Cheap now, impossible later.

The Safer Space process leads: awareness team, Definitionsmacht, consequences. Crisis comms is only the channel-facing half:

• Example — an incident at a reading becomes public: an attendee posts about being harassed at our event. We do not deny, minimize, or demand proof in public. One reply: we've seen it, we take it seriously, we're in contact with the people affected, and we act by our code of conduct. Then the work happens off-channel. No detail about persons, ever — protecting the affected person outranks defending the space.
• Example — we had to remove someone: we don't post about it. If asked publicly: "we enforce our code of conduct; we don't discuss individuals." One sentence, every time, no variations to parse.
• What we never do: fight witnesses' accounts, post our own "version of events," or let the comment section run the investigation.

Online is a different animal: it has no room to read, it rewards speed over truth, and it burns out if not fed. The playbook:

First: classify.

Open the accounts. Are these neighbors, guests and partners with a real grievance — or accounts with no connection to the Kiez, piling on from a quote-post? The two get opposite treatment.

• Legitimate criticism (someone we serve, with a point): answer once, honestly, in plain language. If we were wrong, say so and say what changes — a real mistake plus an honest correction usually ends the story. Thank the person. Done.
• Bad-faith pile-on: don't feed it. No arguing in comments — every reply is fuel and lifts the post in the algorithm. One public statement maximum, on our own channel, at our own pace — the mob's clock is not our clock. Most storms starve within 48 hours if nothing new is thrown on the fire. Silence while we verify is not guilt; it's diligence, and our statement can say exactly that.
• False accusation: one factual correction with evidence, posted once in the one official place. No back-and-forth, no thread. Repetition makes the accusation the headline.
• A partner or booked act turns out to be a problem (the rental-values gate, D22, failed or was blindsided): short, factual separation — what we learned, what we're cancelling, one sentence of values. No drama, no lengthy justification.
• Comment hygiene: limit or lock comments only on the affected post and only if it's flooded. Delete only what breaks the published netiquette — and screenshot before deleting; silent deletions become their own storm. Never delete mere criticism.
• DMs: move real conversations to DM/email after one public reply. Never conduct the case in a thread.

• A single spokesperson per incident = the designated press contact (D12), so this doesn't contradict the flat collective.
• The spokesperson decides with one other steward, not the whole collective in real time. The collective debriefs after, not during.
• A clear escalation chain, and one person reachable after hours during a live event.
• Lawyer, police, insurance: tier 3–4 calls, made by the spokesperson + steward pair.

So nothing is written under fire:

• Holding statements, pre-drafted. Operational: "Heute muss X leider ausfallen — Infos folgen, Tickets behalten ihre Gültigkeit." Accusation: "We've seen the posts about X. We take this seriously, we are speaking with those affected first, and we will respond properly — not in the comments." External-political: a values sentence + "we'll respond in full at [website]."
• An emergency contact list — stewards, lawyer, key partners, awareness team.
• The published netiquette pinned on every channel — it's the legal-legitimacy basis for every comment we later remove.
• Account security: shared password manager, 2FA on everything, recovery owned by ≥2 people — a hijacked account mid-crisis is the nightmare version.

• Pause scheduled posts, all channels, first minute.
• One official statement location — the website, mirrored once to the lead channel; everything else links there. One text, one place, no per-channel improvisation.
• Stories and Telegram stay factual-logistical only ("tonight's event still happens") — no crisis commentary in ephemeral formats.

• A short debrief within a week: what happened, what worked, which template was missing, who burned out.
• Update this plan and the holding statements with what the incident taught.
• Return to normal posting deliberately — first post back is warm and ordinary (the room, a book, a face), not a meta-post about the crisis. Don't let the crisis become the feed.