11.Jan.2007 Best of Arabic Typography; 2006

2006 was a big year for Arabic Typography. The first ever conference fully dedicated to Arabic Calligraphy and Typography, Kitabat, took place in April in Dubai. At the same time, the winners from Linotype’s Arabic Type Design Competition were honoured in a special ceremony on the second evening of the conference. The winning typefaces were released a few weeks ago. The year also saw several new arrivals on the scene, heralding new talent such as Titus Nemeth and Pascal Zoghbi. Last but not least, last January was the first meeting for the Matchmaking Project between Dutch and Arab designers. More below…

Kitabat (www.kitabat.org) was a unique event in scope and time. Designers, historians, calligraphers, and developers gathered from across the globe to exchange ideas and discuss the future of Arabic typography. The program was rich, varied, and well presented. Organising such a conference was a wonderful experience and the collaboration with the university and especially Huda was amazing. We got very positive responce from our audience and we hope to continue this venture in the future. The most important result, though, was the great push this has done for Arabic typography. Arabic typography is still in its infancy and needs the support and encouragement in order to grow and develop. The last few years saw great technology advancement, and this is a unique time in history where we are almost free from technolgical impediments. Speaking of technology, a new plug-in for InDesign ME has been developed to support very complex shaping needed for highly calligraphic Nashi styles of typefaces. I’ll post more info once available.
The Matchmaking project is another landmark project, the scope of which was never attempted before. 5 Arab designers teamed with 5 Dutch ones to collaborate on Arabic versions of existing Latin faces. I was fortunate to work alongside Gerard Unger on an Arabic version of BigVesta which I will be showing in future posts. To know more about the project and the upcoming book, check out this:

http://www.khtt.net/artefact-106-en.html