These four sources are interviews and talks from Chantal Jahchan about her project “En Route” in which she analyzes Arabic typography on road signs, cars or shops in Lebanon. It was helpful because she introduced some techniques used in Arabic typography that I didn’t know had a name and talked about the modernization of Arabic typography without basing it on a Western modernization.
Typographic Match-making in the City, Khatt Books
It’s a book with essays and photographs that discuss the complex topic of public space and designing for multicultural communities. It relates back to my topic because they present a lot of Arabic typography is a public space and its relation with roman characters too.
In this podcast, she speaks about Arabic typography and how to make an Arabic version of a Latin character typeface. It’s been helpful for the exercises I’ve been making where I’m mostly redesigning an Arabic version of a western type.
In this TED talk, Nadine Chahine talks about the importance of plurality for the voices of the Arabic culture in typefaces and insists that there’s a place for both the classical and the modern lettering got contemporary language. It helped me learn more about Arabic Typography and the different way of designing it. But it most importantly taught me the meaning behind a classical typeface compared to a modern one and when to use them.
This talk is about the specifics of Arabic type designs in Beirut and the lack of acknowledging it.It helped me prove my point that most Lebanese designers look at their Arabic designs as an after thought and helped me figure out how we can change that.
She talks about the crises of converting Arabic typefaces digitally and the way they were no type design fundamentals observed or documented when converting it. she touches a lot of subjects in this talk but it made me realize the responsibility I have towards my cultural heritage and the language and how I can stay true to that.
These two articles helped me analyze the anatomy of Arabic typography and know the correct terminology. I did the Arabic Anatomy cards as a summary of these two articles and to help me find my way around the information in an easier way.
Tonight: Cinema in Lebanon 1929-1979, book by Studio Safar
This book presents various graphic designs form the 60s and 70s in Lebanon. It helped me analyze the way Lebanese designers modernized some Arabic typefaces which is absent in the country today. By analyzing some of the posters, I was able to learn a lot about Arabic letterforms, the color choices and the importance of texture.
Cultural Connectives, book by Rana Abou Rjeily
It’s a book that analyzes digital Arabic typefaces and how to truly design one. it helped me learn more about Arabic letterforms specially in comparison to Latin characters.
It’s a service that designers from Google provide to share the company’s design related work. It helped me in terms of the brand’s identity and equity and knowing what are the colors, typefaces and style they design with.
Decolonizing Design reader — A list of readings and resources compiled by Ramonn Tejda
These are all article that talk about decolonizing design, and how to be more inclusive for all cultures. They also talk about the responsibilities that these international companies hold.