11.Apr.2009 The story of Koufiya: Part III

One of the best things of studying at Reading was the trip we took to Rome and Florence, and that has nothing to with my fascination with all things Italian! We spent 5 days in Rome and 2 days in Florence looking at the best examples of Latin inscriptions with the notable exception of the Trajan column that was unfortunately covered up. The trip was headed by Paul Stiff and you couldn’t ask for a better expert and guide to Rome. His oratory skills bring back the greatness of Rome and we all benefited from such an eye opening experience.

The sketch above was my last before Rome, and you can see Gerry’s note: Post-Rome! I was supposed to redo my capitals after I’ve managed to look at the sources. But that was not the only problem. I had a nagging feeling that my Latin was just too sharp and rigid, a bit raw. My a did not look right.

(Click here to catch up with Part I and Part II)

The answer came to me over dinner. We were all gathered in a pizzeria near Piazza Nuova (I think that’s where we were but it’s been a while) and we were talking about our designs when it occured to me that I don’t really need to have all those sharp corners. I can round them up! I couldn’t act on that till after our trip, but it turned to be a great idea. Thank you Rome!

So, I was off to Lebanon for Easter vacation afterward and I will always remember that trip. Of all the times that I had lived in Lebanon, those 5 weeks were the best. And so I got to work, a make-over for both the Latin and the Arabic. The result looked like this:

Much better! My a finally looks like an a!!! Still a lot to resolve though as can be seen in Gerry’s marks…

The Arabic was also miving along nicely. The Ayn was tough to design. You can see that I was struggling with the proportions and the forward motion. It just didn’t fit.

At some point in the early summer, I decided to give Koufiya Latin its serifs. I was convinced that to get the Latin and Arabic to match, the terminal treatment had to be the same. It turned out not to be the case. Koufiya is the proof to that. The Latin flourished with the serifs but I still struggled with the forms.

It was tough. I think I will always struggle with serifs. How big? Which shape? Designing Arabic is so much easier for me!

But serifs are not the only challenge. Accents can be a minefield. I was doing this for the first time, and Koufiya is not a conventional design. The choices were confounding. How do we position them? The French way or the Polish? At which angle?

The Arabic in the meantime was progressing nicely. D-day was coming soon but there was still issues to resolve. The verticals were still too rigid.

The final days before submission were cleaning days, going over the entire character set to ensure consistency. And eventually we submitted the fonts and the specimen. Koufiya would go to sleep for a long time afterward. For the next 4 years Koufiya was in and out of consciousness. It grew and matured slowly. I redrew the outlines several times over. By then I was living in Germany and working at Linotype. Finishing a typeface family while you have a full time job is not easy. To make matters worse I was working on 5 other families at the same time. I’m not sure how I ended up with so many. They just kept adding up!

But alas, all came to a good end. In August 2008, Linotype released Koufiya. My baby had finally come to life!