18.May.2009 Very interesting article on logo design
An interesting article from Steven Heller for AIGA: When bad things happen to good logos. Make sure to read all through it. The last logo is very unfortunate!
04.Jan.2009 The story of Koufiya: Part II
The program at Reading benefits from having great staff that are there to patiently instill design awareness into our souls. If it weren’t for Gerard, Gerry, and Fiona, where would we all be today? It’s always fun to go back to the early sketches and wonder at how lousy we were. Or at least, how [...]
31.Dec.2008 The story of Koufiya: Part I
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 [...]
07.Jul.2008 I love typography!
I’m a bit late in posting this… Here is my interview with ilovetypography.com. Lots of interesting questions and comments from the readers. Thanks John!
29.Jun.2008 The story of Palatino Arabic
I joined Linotype in February 2005 as an intern working on Arabic fonts. As many people know, Prof. Hermann Zapf has a great working relationship with Linotype and he comes to the office quite often. Shortly after I joined, Bruno Steinert introduced me to him and told him about my work there. The following May, [...]
30.Mar.2008 The story of Frutiger Arabic
In early 2004, I was asked by the American University of Beirut to design an Arabic companion to the typeface Frutiger that they had chosen for their internal signage system.
18.Jun.2007 I’m in Cap&Design!
The interview that I did last October has been published in Cap&Design, a leading and very well respected design magazine in Sweden, and now it’s online — thank you, Jonas!— and you can see it here: http://capdesign.idg.se/2.990/1.112375 In case you are wondering about the typeface that the word Beirut is set in, that’s the first [...]
09.May.2007 I’m on the BBC news!
So today was not like any other day at work. The 50th birthday for Helvetica has spurred lots of interest in type and typography and it seems that we have finally migrated ino mainstream news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6638423.stm The article talks about Helvetica and today it made headline news on the BBC News website which is a [...]
23.Nov.2006 On being Lebanese…
This blog is about Arabic typography, so how come there’s so much politics on it? Last month I was in Stockholm and I was interviewed by a magazine. The editor asked me, does the situation of Lebanon (past and present) affect my views on Arabic typography, and I quickly said,”of course.”
14.May.2006 Problems of Arabic Typefaces
This article is concerned with the problems of Arabic typefaces for Mac. The fonts in question are basically those available to Quark Arabic users. Quark Arabic is still the main DTP application used by designers and publishing houses and thus the fonts that are bundled with it play a very important role in the field [...]