After much brainstorming and research I settled on Byblos as the name for the arabic version of BigVesta that I have been working on for the past year. More pictures to come soon.

Arabic fonts | 6 Comments »

Is this an a photo taken in Beirut? No it is not.
A friend of mine was visiting Berlin and he saw this advertisement and was kind enough to send me the photo (thanks Dan!). The design is quite ok and I’m impressed by the overall quality of typography. On a type design level, not much […]

Graphic Design | 4 Comments »

More fun from the Latinised Arabic. This one is a gem!
(Why? The waw is too small; the serifs are all over the place; the Dal and Thal are structurally week; the serif on the Yeh is just hilarious and looks like the end of a vacuum cleaner!)

What were you thinking? | 1 Comment »

The date is getting closer! More info here:
http://www.linotype.com/3194/introduction.html

Events | No Comments »

al_fadjr.pdf
Crossing over into the the western part of the Arab world, we have Al-Fadjr newspaper. It seems that the Algerians like their newspapers to have more color than what we are used to in Lebanon. I’ll show another Algerian paper tomorrow. Same thing. Am I being prejudiced here? There aren’t many newspapers that post pdf’s. […]

Arabic fonts, Graphic Design, What were you thinking? | No Comments »

There’s a typographic equivalent of Mary Shelley’s creation. I took this photo in Dubai. It’s almost a joke, but is in fact very real. Another addition to the what-were-you-thinking section!
(I am especially fond of the Reh and the Alef; does the designer know that the Reh is never taller than the Alef?)

As to the way […]

What were you thinking? | 3 Comments »

Hmm. More on newspaper design with Al-Ayam newspaper from Yemen. This is from the what-were-you-thinking design section.
Fonts: The choice of typefaces , especially the headlines, makes this newspapers issue look like it was printed in the 70’s and that is not a complement. The thick horisontal baseline makes for a very solid base in which […]

Arabic fonts, Graphic Design, What were you thinking? | 2 Comments »

Linotype is organising its 4th TypoTechnica conference to be held here in Frankfurt on April 27-29. More info can be found here: http://www.linotype.com/3250/introduction.html
“TypoTechnica is renowned as the premiere platform bringing together typeface designers, font developers, and software technicians. Taking place for the fourth time, international font technology specialists, speakers and trainers will come together for […]

Events | 1 Comment »