The Arabic Type Design Archive

Graphic designer who likes vector types based in Indonesia. He has loved drawing letters and Arabic calligraphy since he was a child, studied the basic rules of Arabic calligraphy at the Islamic Boarding School and Graduated from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta. When he met GlyphsApp in 2019, he started designing his own typography, and was enthusiastic about harmonizing latin and arabic fonts.

type designer and founder of the Fontamin website.

Masters in Type Design at the University of Reading in 2016 and joined us as a fully fledged Lazydog in 2020. Kat has worked as a typographer and graphic designer before she went on to study type design at the University of Reading in 2015/16. She not only works as a type designer and design director, but also teaches typography at the DIPLOMA University of Applied Sciences and has been part of numerous design conference teams (Granshan, EDCH, Dynamic Font Day). As a graduate of the MATD she brings an international approach and outlook to our company. Besides a love of letters with diacritics she is interested in writing systems beyond Latin, particularly Cyrillic and Arabic – and she is officially responsible for our Lazydogs’ Capital Eszett glyphs. In addition to those official duties, the freshest kat in our dog house also entertains us with type designers’ gossip from the social media realm and the hottest stories from Munich’s graphic design scene.

She is an independent type designer & typographer based in Amsterdam. Since 2005, she has been analysing the structures, aesthetics and historical transformations of the Arabic script with the aim of mechanising the script from its essence. She currently creates Arabic typefaces mainly in DecoType’s ACE technology.

Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such as Palatino, Optima, Zapfino, Melior, Aldus, and the quirky, yet very beloved, Zapf Dingbats, had a prolific career. One of the pioneers of computerized typography, Zapf worked on many fonts, but his personal favorite was the humanist sans serif typeface Optima, the lettering chosen for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, DC. Born in Nuremburg, Zapf started to experiment with font-making as a child. He served as a cartographer for the German army during WWII, drawing maps of Spain. At the end of the war, he was imprisoned by the French but said he was treated well. “They had a great deal of respect for me as an ‘artiste’” he wrote. “I think the French still have this respect today.”

At Manchester Type, each project begins with research. Every typeface they develop is pushed along by passion and curiosity. Their fonts are often informed by the history of letterforms and always aimed at contributing to today’s type-culture.

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.

Parachute® is a European type foundry and design agency founded in 2001, specializing in bespoke type design, corporate typefaces, and lettering for global brands.

Latinotype is a Chilean digital type foundry founded in 2007 that designs and distributes high-quality fonts inspired by Latin American culture and global influences. They have a large library of fonts, are considered a leading type company globally, and offer custom font services.

About. Founded in 2014, Black[Foundry] grew from a shared passion for typography and attention to detail. Over the years, we’ve brought together a committed, international team in central Paris, collaborating with clients and partners worldwide.