Akkurat Arabic is my interpretation of Laurenz Brunner’s popular design for the Arabic script. It seeks to echoe the character of Laurenz’s design in a typographic culture that does not have a remotely comparable number of low contrast types, where even the notion of what constitutes a sans serif design is still in flux. In my interpretation of Akkurat in Arabic, I wanted to avoid an exceedingly modular approach that is prevalent in Arabic low contrast typefaces. Instead, I sought to develop a visual language that makes the Arabic version as usable for continuous text as its Latin companion. To achieve this, Akkurat Arabic draws on the Naskh style, the standard form of Arabic writing for reading. Akkurat Arabic is thus highly rationalised, but its repertoire of shapes, its proportions, and its architecture remain connected to the form of Arabic that is most suitable for text typography. Akkurat Arabic is exclusively distributed by the Swiss Lineto foundry.

Akkurat was Laurenz’s first family, and it is a take on Swiss typographic design that is personal and contemporary. It has a warmth and friendliness that is rare in this stylistic genre, a moderated modernism that makes it at once usable and approachable. The family grew over the years, rather than being planned from the outset as a so-called super family, and has been continuously revised and expanded, and when I was asked to conceive of an Arabic complement, it was part of a larger expansion of the family to provide support for a number of scripts and languages.

Laurenz Brunner is a successful communication designer whose work is reputed especially in the cultural sector. His website, minimalist as it is, provides some clues about his attitude, as well as his professional standing. Here is someone who does not need to shout to be seen and heard. His type design work reflects this character, as his typefaces originate from his very own needs as a communication designer. Laurenz’s most recent endeavour is Source Type.