Since Aisha was conceived some fourteen years ago, Arabic type design has advanced and broadened. Now there are more and more diverse contributions to the field, yet the Maghrebi style remains a minority interest. Only a few new typefaces that follow one or the other variant of this style have been published since, and whilst […]
The last time this site received a structural update dates a few years back, and so does the last update of content. Now some required technical maintenance provided an opportunity to address both. Elena Ramirez, who developed the site originally and is now one half of Ashler Design, kindly agreed to work on the facelift […]
When creating a document with text in the Arabic script on a computer, the process is all but identical to the one for a Latin script text. There is a rectangular text area, usually defined by margins, that is filled with text, just like a basin is filled with water. Subject to the features of […]
On 21 February 2005, Justin Howes died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure. He was 41 years old and inmidst of his PhD research at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication in Reading, UK. Justin investigated aspects of type-making in the ‘long eighteenth century’, and presented a talk about ‘Extreme Type’ at Reading’s postgraduate […]
It is refreshing to see a scholar of ‘Oriental’ studies concern himself with the representation of texts, and visual aspects of the written word. By and large, looking at texts has held little or no priority in most of the humanities (a startling fact that would merit discussion), and so I was interested to see […]
At the recent Face/Interface exhibition (for which the domain must have bought before settling on the show’s final name), and the concomitant conference organised at the library of the Stanford University, participants were invited to give their take on the following question: ‘Non-Latin’ is a peculiar term, defined negatively rather than affirmatively—by what it […]
Last week I have submitted print-ready and ebook-ready files of my book Arabic Type-Making in the Machine Age: The influence of Technology on the Form of Arabic Type 1908–1993, which is going to be published by the Dutch publisher Brill next month. As the blurb says without any false modesty, this is the first in-depth […]
The typographische gesellschaft austria has organised the must ambitious exhibition of Austrian type design to date. ‘Subtext: Typedesign. zeitgenössisch–lokal: contemporary–austrian’ is on show in the Design Forum in the Viennese Museumsquartier from April 12 to May 26, 2017. The vernissage on April 11 was a great success and the venue crammed with visitors. Last week […]
In a first for this website, today I have re-published a text written by someone else; and I am very pleased that it is no lesser contributor than Dr Fiona Ross, whose ‘Non-Latin Type at Linotype’ is made accessible again. Originally written and presented at the First annual Friends of St Bride conference, 24 & […]
On May 17, 2006, I was in the process of defining Arabic mark positions for Nassim in a roundabout process involving a dummy FontLab MultipleMaster file, custom export scripts and Microsoft’s beloved Visual OpenType Layout Tool – VOLT. I was a Master’s student at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of […]