Experimental Arabic Type :
Breaking Away from a Rich Tradition

Dates :

Friday 3 October–Friday 5 December 2003

Times :

Monday–Fri 9:30–17:00 (or 9:30–5)

Venue :

The Special Collections Gallery
University Library Amsterdam (UvA)
Singel 425
Amsterdam, NL

Public Transport :

tram 1, 2 and 5 (stop Koningsplein)

The Exhibition :

The rich Arabic calligraphic tradition has had a long and influential history in shaping and regulating the visual aspect of the Arabic script. Originally conceived to represent the holy scriptures of the Quran, the Arabic script became an emblem of the Islamic religion, and therefore, its perceived beauty and reproduction became a matter of religious piety. This attitude to the script resulted in a conservative tradition that saw any deviation from the age-old calligraphic rules as disfigurement of the script a mere blasphemy.

When the printed Arabic typographic book was first introduced in the Middle East by the Roman Church, it was merely for religious and political reasons, and so the emphasis was put mainly on making the type look as close as possible to the calligraphic styles that were most popular at the time. The later versions of Arabic printing types, whether of European or Middle Eastern origins, never deviated much from that formula. Though there have been some movements towards "modernising" the Arabic script and adapting it to modern means of type production, these ideas were neither widely popular nor implemented into the visual culture of the Arab world.

Formal experiments in Arabic type design came to their highest point with Letraset's invention of the dry-transfer type. The low-cost and flexibility of this type production medium brought type design close to Arab designers, as opposed to the high cost typesetting machines of that period which were exclusively in the hands of western manufacturers, and were conceived to accommodate mainly the Latin script. The latter was also the reason why the ground-breaking digital technology had little influence on Arabic type design. Fortunately, this situation has dramatically changed with the advent of the Internet, and the growing awareness of the potential market benefits of a global world culture. It is presently almost as easy to design Arabic fonts as it is to design and develop Latin ones. Nevertheless, in comparison to the exponential growth of Latin type designs, Arabic fonts are still lagging behind in terms of cost, variety and design quality. The latter may also be due to the lack of a well-established Arabic typographic tradition which can guide and educate newcomers t0 the field of type design.

In the last decade of the 20th century, a number of educational programs (mostly graphic design and/or visual communication programs) have emerged in the Middle East (in Beirut, Dubai, Sharjah, Qatar), and have been actively graduating a new generation of well-educated graphic designers. These young designers entering the design profession have had to face the fact of the limited choice of quality Arabic fonts. The problem they face is how to design a contemporary looking bi-lingual piece using antiquated-looking Arabic fonts, specially when these fonts are paired with modern Latin fonts, which is an inevitable requirement for most design pieces produced in the multi-cultural communities of the affluent Middle Eastern societies.

In this exhibition, the work of young design students is showcased in order to present the emerging generation's "do-it-yourself" attitude and desire to establish a modern type design trend in the Arab world. These type design experiments aim to address on one hand the new global design aesthetic, and the on the other hand, to provide design solutions for the needs of modern communication media. The experimental aspect of these new type designs lies in the fact that they intentionally "break away" from the conventional calligraphic styles and move towards a new design direction that does not strictly abide by the rules of pen-drawn letterforms.

The student type design projects include a range of:

• fonts for on-line reading or screen fonts designed to achieve legibility with the minimal amount of detail and pixels; the largest is the AT-20, a 20-pixel high font, and the smallest is the Rezwati, a 9-pixel high screen font,
• fonts with simplified shapes and open counterforms designed to be legible at very small type sizes,
• display fonts that are expressive and playful, designed for special purposes, and often inspired by popular culture.

More Info :

Library's Reception:
T : 020-525 2301

For subject related information:
E : huda.abifares@wanadoo.nl
W : http://www.uba.uva.nl/actueel/tentoonstellingen.cfm
[for text and information in Dutch, please consult the website above]