Journal

News, accounts and occasional commentary.

Aisha update brings swashes and more alternates, packed into a variable font

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 […]

‘Arabic Typography: History and Practice’ is out now

The TypoArabic research project concluded on 3 June 2022, and I am delighted to announce that its principal output, the edited volume Arabic Typography: History and Practice, has now been published by niggli. As foreshadowed in a post on the TypoArabic blog in June 2021, a group of esteemed colleagues were invited to contribute chapters […]

Justin Howes Memorial Lecture 2019

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 […]

Non-Latin?

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 […]

Subtext: Typedesign. zeitgenössisch–lokal: contemporary–austrian

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 […]