:::: Arabic Type Designer & Typographer :: Arabic Type :: Pascal Zoghbi ::::

3D square Kufi workshop at LAU [ Lebanese American University]

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Alef Magazine 6th issue is out and the Alef Caps fonts are used in it. Here is some inside pages showing the font in use.

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Square Kufi patterns are often used in mosques for Qur’anic verses or Islamic sayings. It is very rare to see square kufi patterns created out of Christian bible verses or Christian sayings…

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“Bukra Extra Bold” is an Arabic display typeface for “Ibn Battuta Mall” in Dubai. The English slogans and ads in the mall were done uses the Latin font “Futura Extra Bold”. They asked for an Arabic font that has the same feel and sturdiness as “Futura Extra bold”.
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A small workshop in the “Type Design” course at NDU involving the creation of hybrid Latin words using basic letter components from Arabic letter-forms. English and French words created from Arabic letters.

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A beautiful film by filmmaker and musician Premjit Ramachandran on the Musalman, perhaps the last remaining handwritten newspaper in the world.

Al Rouiya is a corporate Arabic titling typeface for “Al Rouiah” newspaper in Kuwait. The font is exclusive for 5 years for “Al Rouiah” newspaper in Kuwait starting from February 2008. The newspaper needed a new, young and crispy type that will appeal to young readers.

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A Drop Initial Caps typeface for Alef Magazine. Alef Caps is a pixel font inspired from the arabesque “Msharabiyé” eight-star shape. It will be first in use in the 6th issue of the magazine. The magazine asked for a Roman Drop Intial Caps type inspired from Arabic culture. I worked on this type in collaboration with Huba AbiFares.

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The New design of “Emarat Al Youm” newspaper in Dubai is out with its’ headlines set in “Imarat Headlines” typeface that i have created for them alongside “TheMix Arabic” which is used for the newspaper sections titles.

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The two typefaces: 1. Arabic “Al Rouiya Headlines” and 2. Latin “Alif Arabesque Pixel” are my latest projects that i am working on at the moment. I will write more about the new typefaces when they are published.

Happy New Year and may 2008 be a fruitful and successful year to all.

Through out November and December in Beirut, I had giving : 1. a lecture entitled “29letters” about my Arabic type project and type design process at AUB, 2. a presentation about EL HEMA project alongside the Arabic team (Wael, Kj, Maria & Raya) at NDU Zouk and NDU North, and 3. took part of the event, lecture and exhibition of the “Khatt Fonts: Matchmaking Amsterdam – Beirut” with Huda Abifares and the Arabic team.

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Movable Metal Letters are just amazing. [Especially for type lovers like me ;)]

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The 12th issue of Idpure Swiss magazine of graphic design and visual creation was dedicated on young type designers work in the glob. I was the young Arabic type design interviewed for the 12th issue of the magazine alongside Nikola Djurek, Kai Bernau, Anton Koovit, Christian Schwartz, Frederik Berlaen, Xavier Dupré.

Snap shot of two spread from my section in the magazine.
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El-Hema wins the VISUAL IDENTITY PRIZE at DE NEDERLANDSE DES1GNPRIJ2EN3 The NETHERLANDS DESIGN PRIZE.
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Imarat is an Arabic newspaper type family consisting of “Imarat Headlines” & “Imarat Text”. “Imarat Headlines” is a display type for use in the headlines and titling of a newspaper, while “Imarat Text” is for the copy text of the newspaper. “Imarat Headlines” will be exclusive for 3 years for “Emarat Al Youm” newspaper in Dubai starting from 2008. The newspaper needed a new, young and crispy headlines type that will appeal to their young readers. You can see the font in use on the online e-paper version of “Emarat Al Youm” newspaper.

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TheMix Arabic is one of the five new Arabic typefaces that was included in the Typographic Matchmaking Project organized by the Khatt Foundation. Lucas de Groot and Mouneer Al-Shaarani initially designed TheMix Arabic, but when the type needed to be finalized and transformed into a proper Arabic type, I was asked by Huda AbiFares to undertake the font from this point on since Mouneer is a calligrapher and not an Arabic type designer, and Lucas does not know the Arabic script.

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I was contacted by Don R. Kari after he saw the Lebanese Graffiti post on my blog. Don Kari is a german graffiti artist. He and his german graffiti colleagues initiated a project in Cuba and now they want to do the project in Beirut. You can have a look on the graffiti project in Cuba at the following link: CubaBrazil

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August was a great experience for five young Arabic graphic designers (fresh graduates) from the Arab world and I. The 24th of August was the “Khatt Kufi Kaffiya” symposium on Arabic Visual Culture, the official launching of the Khatt Foundation website and the launching and book signing of the Typographic Matchmaking book. Alongside these events, Mediamatic initiated an exhibition to team up Arabic typographers with Dutch design and culture. The exhibition was to create an Arabic version of the famous HEMA Dutch stores.

Design of the White Scarf by Kj using Sada Bold. The text on it is the lyrics or the song “YA Maré’ 3al Taya7een” for Fairuz.

Wael, Kj, Maria, Ray, Abi (the 5 young Arabic graphic designers) and I were invited by Mediamatic to come to Amsterdam for 6 weeks before the opening of the EL HEMA exhibition to work on the making of this exhibition. (more…)

On the 28th and 29th of August I gave a workshop for non-Arab participants during the El Hema Exhibition at the Mediamatic Workshop area.

You can read more about the workshop in the following links:
Kufi Workshop in Amsterdam at Mediamatic, Amsterdam.
Brief intro of the Kufi Workshop

Giving some comments on the primarily kufi patterns.

Here are some pictures. Enjoy. (more…)

The following article is a brief description of systems and guidelines used in Arabic calligraphy and Arabic type design field to achieve proportional and harmonious Arabic letters. This article is intended for typography students and beginners in Arabic type design.

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Fnikiya is an all Caps Display font based on the ancient Phoenician alphabet. The font is originally created for Alarm Editions publishing house in Beirut. The font will be used in their next book publishing “La Phénicie”. (La Phénicie , Tatiana Baher & Norica-Daniela El-Hallak, Illustations drawn by Lebanese children, Alarm Editions 2007)

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Some work of my students from the “Fundamentals of Design I” course at NDU. Brief 01 is to represent the Lebanese roads and highways while Brief 02 is to document traditional Lebanese fast food merchants and shops. (more…)

1. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TRADITIONAL ARABIC TYPE.
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1.1 The origin of the Arabic script goes back to the first alphabets which were created by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were living on the costal area of Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. Since the Phoenicians were business traders sailing the Mediterranean, the alphabet influenced all the Mediterranean nations. The location of the middle-east being in the center of the ancient world (between the east and the west) also played a part in the spreading of the alphabet. So that is why the Phoenician alphabet is the mother of the Latin as well as the Arabic script.

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Developing and generating Arabic fonts is not as easy and straightforward as for Latin fonts.This article will cover Encoding, Glyph and Font naming, OpenType features and other topics concerning the preparation of an Arabic font before generating it.

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The long awaited ‘Typographic Matchmaking’ Book will be launched at a symposium and exhibition at Mediamatic in Amsterdam on the 24th of August 2007.

The following text is written by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès:

The project began with the idea of creating Arabic type with a Dutch flavor in order to bring the high quality of Dutch type design to the rather underdeveloped Arabic design tradition. (more…)

Nearly all of the graffiti in Lebanon over the past years were either 1. political words & sentences or 2. signage for shops or places. However, last week I was driving to Beirut and I have spotted a new graffiti that did not have either a political connotation to any political party or it was a signage for a shop. It is a pure social graffiti done by young Lebanese groups to express their feelings about Beirut. (more…)

‘Vernacular Kufi’ is a new approach that I thought of in order to introduce the kufi workshop to the AUB Typography II students and make them interested in it.

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Vernacular Arabic calligraphy in Lebanon is everywhere.
As signage for traditional Lebanese shops, on the walls, on trucks…

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Students of the ‘Applied Typography’ course at NDU were asked to do an Arabic or Arabic/Latin monogram for a fake textile company. Here are some pics of the sketching process.

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Superpolator is the tool for interpolating on multiple axes with several masters while enjoying the animated instances and visually choosing your interpolated type.

Erik van Blokland introduces this superb software that helps type designer create their type families with ease and fun. (more…)

BrownBook magazine is a new lifestyle, design and travel magazine launched in Dubai. The first issue was published in February 07. In each issue of the magazine there is a spread reserved for a regional Arabic designer.

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During the last month political slogans took over most of the Lebanese billboards.

On the right is the first set of billboards and the left is the second set. Compare the two. Notice the difference between the Alef-Hamza, the Heart shape and the Arabic type used. And for sure you notice you added sprayed Arabic type and the rainbow logo.

The first set of billboards conveyed a non-political method using the slogan (or logotype) as “I Love Life” in all three languages Arabic, English and French. (more…)

What is the future of the Craftsmanship of the Arabic calligraphy?
Will new technologies in Arabic type setting bring an end to the craftsmanship?
What kind of new Arabic fonts do we need for the Arabic market?

I asked myself these three questions last week during an Arabic calligraphy workshop at NDU with Mr. Samir Haddad (Arabic Calligrapher) for the Graphic Design – Typography students. After the workshop I spoke for a while with Mr. Haddad about the techniques of the Arabic calligraphy and about its history. During our conversation we talked about the future of the craftsmanship. (more…)

I was thinking for the last days what to make as an e-card for the New Year and send to my friends and colleagues. Due to the sad events lately in Lebanon, I could not get any nice ideas for the coming year. So I did this fast sketch expressing what I and most of the Lebanese people are feeling. We are hoping for a better year but at the same time we are worried that it is going to be even worth then 2006. That is why the sketch is fast illustration of Lebanese buildings bombed and black smoke developing above the cityscape. If you look Closely you notice that the black smoke is composed of Arabic letters reading “Happy New Year” in Arabic. That is “Aam Saaid”. The sketch is done with black ink on a dark grey paper. After I finished the sketch I have added on it with white tip-ex a sentence hoping a white 2007 year on Lebanon and not black as the previous year.
Happy New Year.

I will be giving a lecture at Notre Dame University on the 20th of November about the recent history of Arabic type and the type design process.

This workshop is part of the Fundamentals of Typography course at NDU. The students are asked to create a kufi pattern or logotype from their first names.

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Massira is defined in Arabic as: to walk with, to walk in a group, from the action of walking. In Lebanese slang, Massira happens when a group of people walks together for a purpose or cause; it could be a political demonstration or even a prayer group.
My concept of making an Arabic Lebanese typeface that reflects the spirit of the Lebanese people led me to the demonstrations by the Lebanese in Beirut that occurred between February and April of 2005. Searching for a visual reference in this event, I found that the petition, which started out spontaneously from the demonstrators, would be my source of inspiration for my Lebanese typeface.

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