Tarek Atrissi is one of my favourite Lebanese Graphic Designers who specializes in Type.
I was looking at his blog and found that in one of his posts he talks about creating a typeface inspired by hand writing, something that i was keen on doing when i developed my ideas for this brief.
| Arabic Type, Typography, Design and Visual Culture: The Blog of Tarek Atrissi
(article below)
Since our start as a design studio, we have been heavily involved in
designing original Arabic typefaces, and through our 10 years of design
practice at Tarek Atrissi Design, we have left a visible mark on the
typographic landscape. Our fonts are to be seen used across the Arab
world, in print, on air, on newspaper headlines and as part of elaborate
corporate identity systems. The last two years haven’t been an
exception: we have designed several corporate and custom Arabic (and
bilingual) fonts for different clients, many of which we haven’t posted
yet on our blog or website.
One font I am particularly proud of and excited about is the font I
am sharing in this blog post. The custom display font for the Arab
Museum of Modern Art, “Mathaf”, a new museum opening today in Doha -
Qatar through its inaugural exhibition “Sajjil”. The Arabic and Latin
font is the result of months of intensive work, and is one of the main
components in the visual identity and branding adopted for the museum.
Unlike many of the typical briefs we usually get for designing custom
fonts, this typeface design commission for such a high profile
organization was really out of the box. It challenged us to put into it
the creativity and experimentation that we usually put into self
initiated type design projects. The bilingual typeface we were asked to
design was more of an artist experimentation: It had to look far from a
digital typeface, but rather a hand scribble; a personal signature; a
quick spontaneous-looking hand writing that looks more like a scribble
taken from an artist’s sketchbook. This request was a particular design
challenge. Especially for an Arabic font as anyone would imagine:
Creating the illusion of a hand written scribble in a script that has
connected letters was a tough task. Which might explain why as a matter
of fact there aren’t this sort of digital Arabic fonts available out
there.
The design process was very exciting and defined by experimentation.
In the first phases of the project we explored all sort of manual
lettering work. The focus was on finding the right formula to create a
spontaneous writing style, while keeping in mind the challenge of
matching the Arabic and Latin parts of the font to communicate the same
spirit. There is basically nothing we did not try: Creating metallic
brushes from Coca-Cola cans and writing with it; Graffiti writing on
large newspaper sheets; Asking extended family to write quickly in
charcoal pens; and looking in our archive for collected old Arabic
newspapers which still used manual hand calligraphy for typesetting all
headlines. Several design rounds made us finally use the outcome of a
specific handwriting that filled in our stack of sketches. This material
was scanned, digitized, and then developed and refined further to
create the basis of the design. Twenty two rounds of presentations were
needed to polish the final design. The final character set, particularly
in Arabic, included a wide set of ligatures that allowed a more natural
flow of the script. The final design echoed in one way or another some
of the initial inspirations we used while developing this typeface:
street hand made lettering that could be found in different sizes, forms
and textures- and that I have for long documented as part of my visual
research. Previews of the final font, as well as some selected samples
of from the process, are shown as part of the images showcased here.
Above: Preview images of the process development of the design
Without being labeled as an Arabic font with calligraphic features or
a font with contemporary typographic features, the Mathaf-script
typeface is above all a font reflecting a personal expression. An
expression that is maybe typical to any piece present in a Museum of
Modern Art.
To me personally, regardless of the final outcome of the design, the
simple fact that we were commissioned for this project is a double
rewarding honor: On one hand, it is a confirmation that the type of
Arabic fonts we have often focused on developing are highly in demand:
Fonts designed by graphic designers for graphic designers; fonts that
have strong characters and that are ideal for usage in corporate design
and branding context, and that are designed to communicate a very
specific mood or message. On the other hand, by being asked to take part
of visualizing the written voice of “Mathaf”, we are in one way or
another given the honor of being part of Arab modern art,
typographically speaking at least.
Above: Samples of the font usage within the branding and identity
system of Mathaf. Showing the countdown posters for the opening event;
application of the font on pins and printed matters; and screenshots
from promotional video using the font for on-screen titles.