The Arabic Type Design Archive

An award-winning Syrian type designer. He is the principal and founder of Sakkal Design, based in the US. He started professionally as an architect and graphic designer but has been a full-time designer of Arabic fonts since 2002. He holds a PhD from the University of Washington in the History of Islamic Art. He collaborates with many type foundries and corporations, and his awards include 6 from TDC and Granshan competitions.

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.

Artur (b. Netherlands, 1976) caught the type bug at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where he graduated in 2003 with a master’s degree in design from the Type and Media course. He has been working in the type industry ever since. In 2018 he founded Original Type, an indie type foundry that believes that type is essential to express authentic and unique voices.

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.”

Reza Ghaffari | Type Designer, Official member of the Iranian Graphic Designers Guild since 2008.

The Northern Block is an independent type foundry internationally recognised for producing modernist fonts for brands, creatives and makers.

NamelaType is a type foundry based in Magelang, Indonesia operated by Nur Syamsi and Bustanul Arifin. Passionate about harmonizing Latin and Arabic fonts, we aim to create innovative solutions that align their weight, shape, and style—despite their opposite flows—while exceeding our own and our readers’ expectations.

We are a type foundry situated in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark. For more than twenty years we have been making retail and custom-made typefaces for international brands.

Abjad aspires to develop and transfer the Arabic typography, to the same level, that was reached by Arab and Muslim calligraphers, who came from very diverse cities and civilizations, extending from Samarkand and China in the east, to Andalusia in the west. This diversity has produced countless forms and schools of Arabic calligraphy.

Specialize in typography and offer innovative font solutions designed & programming to meet the needs of global and local audiences.