The Arabic Type Design Archive

Instructor of specialized graphics course Master of Graphics Design :Visual artist

Ali Alattas, a graphic and typeface designer with experience in the field of graphic design and typography, I have worked in various are as including branding and typeface design, and I have successfully designed a typeface that is currently being used by a major news channel. I enjoy continuous development and new challenges, and I believe that this feature helps me achieve success in the field of graphic and typeface design.

Albert-Jan Pool is a Dutch designer based in Hamburg, Germany. After his studies at Gerrit Noordzij at the Royal Academy in The Hague (NL), he was a type director at Scangraphic and URW. In 1995 his career started as a graphic designer. At the suggestion of Erik Spiekermann, he designed FF OCR-F and FF DIN, one of the most successful fonts at FontShop. The interplay of graphic design, marketing and writing led to the publication of “types make brands powerful” together with Stefan Rögener (AdFinder) and Ursula Packhäuser. The English edition “Branding with Type” appeared at AdobePress. At the Hanseatic Academy for Marketing and Media in Hamburg, he taught typography in the Department of Communication Design for several years. One of his specialties is the development of corporate type, e.g. the Jet Set Sans, for the likewise memorably designed yellow-blue filling stations (Design: Syndicate Brand & Corporate Design, Hamburg). The C & A InfoType was developed together with Uwe Melichar from Factor Design for their customer C & A. The next project in this series was the DTL HEIN GAS, the exclusive handwriting for HEINGAS Hamburger Gaswerke (now E.ON Hanse). In 2009, he designed a corporate type for the new petrol stations at HEM. Fabian Eschkötter, who designed the design “Frappant” as part of his diploma thesis, supported him energetically.

He is a Syrian-born type designer whose work bridges Arabic and Latin typography with a focus on legibility and wayfinding. He holds both an MA and a PhD in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, where his doctoral research examined the diversity of Arabic type styles and their influence on Arab readership. Before co-founding Foundry 5 in 2021, he expanded his MA graduation project Jali into a multilingual superfamily for Arabic, Latin, and Greek. His widely recognised typefaces include Jali, a humanist sans serif designed for multilingual signage, which received the Type Directors Club Certificate of Typographic Excellence and Granhan’s First Prize in the Arabic and Latin category (2019). At Foundry 5, he continues to develop typefaces for global contexts, uniting scripts across cultural and functional boundaries to set new standards for clarity and inclusivity in multilingual design. Mohamad’s work reflects a commitment to accessibility and cross-cultural communication, combining academic research with design practice. He has taught as Lecturer in Graphic Design at the University of Reading and as Associate Professor at the German University in Cairo, where he continues to contribute to design education alongside his professional and research practice.

With over 15 years of experience in graphic design and typeface creation, he has designed several fonts, including Farhoud, Capsule, Ostad, and Melli.

TNTypography in Paris, and specializes in Arabic typeface design, typography and custom type. A 2006 graduate in the Master of Arts Typeface Design programme at the Department of Typography and Visual Communication, University of Reading, he also studied Arabic script at the École Supérier d'Art et de Design d'Amiens, France. Titus holds a PhD in Typography & Graphic Communication from the University of Reading, UK.

Babelfont is an independent type foundry in Paris and Marrakech. We design multiscript typefaces — Arabic, Latin, Tifinagh, and Korean. Our goal is simple: connect cultures through letterforms.
 The language of the future is multiscript.

A typeface design studio and font distributor that addresses the needs of global typography. Together with our collaborators, we create original fonts for a polyphonic world. Our research-based practice has been recognized and received awards from within the industry. But most importantly it has enabled people to read better in their native language.

This is KO-type. The move you probably anticipated, that will knock all free font-haters out of their chairs. That was a joke. Kotype is a community dedicated to the love of Arabic fonts. Whether it’s appreciation, creation, or simply usage, we are all connected by the love of Arabic Fonts, just like our love for the Arabic language.

Our names are Sahar Afshar and José Solé, and we are partners in life and in Dogray, a type foundry based in the south of London. We met in 2017 in a type conference⁠—⁠here’s to our dearly departed TypoLabs Berlin⁠🍻⁠—⁠and hit it off (we actually met in 2015 at our friend Kalapi’s wedding in India, but that’s a story for another time). After working in a large type design studio for some years, we decided to leave the safety of our full time jobs and get back to what brought us to making fonts in the first place; the joy of creative decision making in the design of typefaces, and reconnecting with the wider design community. We started Dogray Type Foundry to do just that; to enjoy designing fonts we feel will be useful, and bring fun back into our careers. Very importantly, we wanted to embrace collaboration over competition; we center co‑creating at the heart of our foundry⁠—⁠not just in combining our individual strengths and skills, but also by using each of our library fonts as an opportunity to collaborate with a different creative from the wider fields of Arts and Humanities. We do this because of our fundamental belief; that best work happens when unique and diverse perspectives collide.