Koufiya is not a typeface. Koufiya is an idea born through a war-torn childhood, a struggling region, and a great passion for design. Culture, politics, and design come together to mesh into a wish for open communication and equal status. Koufiya is about dialogue and harmony among opposites. It’s about co-existence without the loss of individuality and authenticity.
But before I get too carried away into the thoughts and reasoning behind the design, let’s take a look at the design itself. I started Koufiya in 2002 at the MA in Typeface Design at Reading. I was the first Arab student to attend the program and Koufiya was the first Arabic project. Our task was to design a family of 3 variants and I chose to design an Arabic and a Latin that are in harmony and meant for use in bilingual publication. I had practiced graphic design long enough to know that it was not an easy task, and that this was a major requirement for a large proportion of design work in the Middle East.
Koufiya took forever to finish. You’ll now see why. It has a Latin, and designing Latin doesn’t come naturally to me at all, and then it had to match my Arabic, then I had to design characters that I had no clue where they came from, or what they are supposed to do. Fun!
I started the design in October and by mid December I had the basic characters of the Arabic and Latin. They matched in the sense that they were equally lousy designs and so I don’t show them here. The problem was that I jumped very quickly into the details of the design without first deciding on the general design concept. What was I trying to design?
We then went off for Christmas holidays and I visited my sister and stayed with her for around a month and there I had the chance to reorganize my thoughts. I decided to completely trash my first proposal and start from scratch. I looked at my favorite style of Arabic calligraphy, the Early Kufi, and decided to use that as a starting point. The Early Kufi had qualities that I believed would create a very modern look: they were clear, uncomplicated forms, with a boldness and stability that was visually impressive.
After the holidays, I came back to England with this sketch.
To be continued…