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June 27, 2010

‘Nassim’

‘Nassim’, published in Philizot, Vivien (ed.), “Langage et typographie”, Livraisons 13, 122–125, (2010).

 

Nassim is a contemporary text typeface for Arabic and Latin script. The core concept ‎of Nassim is to conceive a design that facilitates multilingual text setting in which ‎both scripts appear balanced and harmonious. The main concern was to create both ‎scripts as authentic designs in which neither Arabic nor Latin have to follow the ‎proportions of the other. To achieve this, both scripts were designed synchronously ‎from the very beginning. This contrasts to most typefaces that cover Arabic and Latin ‎support in which the Arabic part is often designed following the model of an existing ‎Latin typeface.‎

The main objective was to deal with both scripts as independent and yet matching and ‎related designs. Formal harmony was achieved by a careful balance of colour, ‎perceived size, contrast, modulation and subtle details of shapes. While there are some ‎common design features such as the cuts inside counters and similar curve dynamics, ‎the vertical proportions and strokes of Arabic and Latin characters are not ‎mathematically equal, but visually adjusted for harmony.‎

In addition to its strengths for multi-script typesetting, Nassim was developed to cater ‎for the requirements of newsprint: economy, readability and sturdiness. It was ‎designed to give a highly legible and open touch to text in small sizes. Conceived as a ‎contemporary interpretation of Arabic news typography, Nassim is highly distinct ‎from other newsfaces, giving publications an elegant, fresh and unique look. It ‎therefore lends itself particularly well to news typography, but just as well as to ‎editorial design.‎

The first version of Nassim was conceived and designed in 2005/06. Since then it won ‎the TDC’s ‘Certificate of Excellence in Type Design’ and the 2007 European Design ‎Award for best original typeface design. Furthermore, Nassim was shortlisted and ‎exhibited by the Design Museum London in the category Graphic Design as Design of ‎the Year 2007 – a rare honor for a typeface. ‎

In December 2008 Nassim was released by WinSoft with the launch of Tasmeem™4. ‎For this release, Nassim underwent major changes. The Arabic design was completely ‎revised and updated to take advantage of the features of Tasmeem™ (see next page ‎for an illustration of the advanced capabilities). Moreover, Nassim now supports the ‎complete Unicode block for the Arabic script, which means that all the features of ‎Nassim are available for the widest range of languages possible (including but not ‎limited to Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashtu, Sindhi, Uyghur). This is ‎groundbreaking for some of these languages are barely or even not at all supported by ‎most conventional Arabic typefaces.‎
 

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