Arabic Type Classification System - Qualitative Classification of Historic Arabic Writing Scripts in the Contemporary Typographic Context

The emergence of typography shifted written language into a mechanical tool of transmitting meaning, thereby further reducing the connection of representation of language with the language itself which began with the development of writing systems. Developed from various writing systems and languages, typography is the primary mode of visual communication of language. It has become even more important in the digital world we are living in today. This research examines the relationship of Arabic script conventions and classifications in the context of typographic representation, and how typographic representations of the Arabic language have been distorted due to the influence of Latin typographic guidelines in the development of Arabic typefaces. This history has failed to produce Arabic typefaces that accord with the unique cultural, linguistic and contextual character of the Arabic writing system. To address this, an investigation was carried out, through multiple design research methods and methodologies incorporating typographic studies and theories of embodiment applied to the evolution of the Arabic writing system, calligraphy and typography in the Arab region. The investigation aims to better understand, and respond to problems in the use of typefaces at the intersection of languages and cultures. Through the generation of a typeface classificatory system, linking the ground rules of calligraphic scripts, structural influences of Arabic letterforms, and adapting them into existing typefaces used today, this research proposes a tool to assist designers in the making of typographic decisions in the setting of Arabic language, and in its relationship to roman typography. Key words : Typography, classificatory attributes, Arabic language, culture, linguistics, embodimen

Tirhal family: A bilingual typeface bridging two worlds

This thesis attempts to show considerations related to typeface design specifically for the use in printed customer materials used in immigration sector. The genre of typefaces used for the government always highlights the importance of legibility. With the massive immigration flow into Europe after the Syrian crisis, it is fundamental for immigration services to provide documents in Arabic language using legible and well-designed typefaces. Having a legible typeface plays a pivotal role for immigrants in helping them to comprehend information about their new surroundings. The specific objective of the thesis is to explore the design of the Migri (Finnish Immigration Services) multilingual materials and determine on how to create a bilingual typeface in Arabic and Latin for use in the governmental sectors aimed at helping immigrants. The thesis sheds light on the methodological processes in harmonization and explores bilingual typefaces. It also investigates typefaces used in the public sector. This study explores the common trends in bi-script typefaces and investigates how these trends came into being. It documents the process on how to create a multilingual typeface family. The final outcome is presented in the form of a bi-script typeface of Arabic and Latin. The goal is to achieve good legibility and a unified visual identity

Morotugal - Bilingual Typeface: Bridging Portugal and Morocco

This research attempts to show considerations related to typeface design, specifically for printed materials used to showcase the cultral connections between Morocco and Portugal. Morotugal hybrid typeface will mostly appeal graphically and visually amusing toward a specific target, which are Portuguese and Moroccan dialects speakers. Albeit Portugal being only few miles away from Morocco, it seems that the relationship between the two countries are not often talked about. This is where this research comes in handy. A common typeface is thus needed to describe and showcase not only the diplomatic relations but also the cultural similarity and common words between these nations. This thesis sheds light on methodological techniques while harmonizing and exploring bilingual typefaces. It also investigates different attempts to improve experimentation and blend and homogenize Arabic (Maghribi Mabsut Style) and Latin alphabets, alongside a survey that was conducted to collect large amounts of data to better understand my target audience. The purpose is to explore different legible approaches and create a unified visible typographic identity. Ultimately, the goal is to create a distinct typeface that will showcase and create a visual identity for the bilateralism between Morocco and Portugal, focusing specifically on the common words used in both countries

The Problem of Stretching in Persian Calligraphy and a New Type 3 PostScript Nastaliq Font

This research is about a typeface for implementing Persian calligraphy called Nastaliq. The main purpose for developing this font was to handle stretching of letters in order to achieve line justification through a dynamic font. Therefore, a PostScript Type 3 font was developed. However, as the research progressed, it came clear that Nastaliq’s stretching cannot be implemented in a dynamic font. Therefore, the research’s purpose changes to implementing a font containing all the needed glyphs of all needed stretchings of all stretchable letters to allow achieving line justification. For this propose a mathematical formulation to model handwritten Nastaliq was necessary. The result was a PostScript font containing more than 1200 glyphs. To make it possible to use this font in the future, a regular expression grammar was developed to identify and name each glyph as a positioned letter in a particular context. This thesis describes all the steps taken to build the font

Typography Behind the Arabetic Calligraphy Veil

In the change from scriptural writing systems to textual mechanical systems and most recently to digital, computer generated text, some languages and their typographic representations have suffered. One such language, along with its visible language representation, that has not made a smooth transition is Arabic. The author argues that misinterpreting language tradition prevents what he calls Arabetic typography from embracing an appropriate technological adaptation. Putting forth an evolutionary argument, he critiques the notion that calligraphic styles must prevail and that legibility and readability of Arabic characters is objective. He further states that the resulting typefaces when abandoning the so called “Arabic script rules” he challenges are similar in visual impact to the ‘free calligraphy’ typefaces already widely used in the marketplace. Finally he challenges the notion that technological maturity has been reached in digital character input and generation. Following these critiques, he demonstrates the awkward input system for Arabetic text and proposes a Natural Arabetic Input Method. A political and economic subtext runs throughout the essay

The adoption and impact of computer integrated prepress systems in the printing and publishing industries of Kuwait

This research is aimed at developing a comprehensive picture of the implications of digital technology in the graphic arts industries in Kuwait. The purpose of the study is twofold: (1) to explore the meaning of the outcomes of recent technological change processes for the traditional prepress occupations in Kuwait; and, (2) to examine the impact of technology on Arabic layout and design. The study is based on the assumption that technological change is a chain of interactions among the sociological, cultural, political and economic variables. The prepress area in Kuwait has its own cultural, social, economic, and political structure. When a new technology is introduced it is absorbed and shaped by the existing structure. Based on such a dialectical conceptualisation, four major levels of analysis can be distinguished in this study: (1) technological change in the graphic arts industries; (2) the typographic evolution of the Arabic script; (3) the workers themselves as individuals and occupational collectives; and, (4) technology's impact on Arabic publication design. The methodological approach selected for this study can be defined as a dialectical, interpretive exploration. Given the historical perspective and the multiple levels of analysis, this approach calls for a variety of data gathering methods. Both qualitative and quantitative data were sought. A combination of document analysis, participant observation and interviewing allow to link the historical and current events with individual and collective actions, perceptions and interpretations of reality. The findings presented in this study contradicts the belief that the widespread adoption of new production processes is coincidental with continuous advances in scientific knowledge which provide the basis for the development of new technologies. Instead, the changes have been hindered by the lack of untrained personnel, the Arabic software incompatibility, and the lack of informed decisions to successfully implement the technology. Without any doubt, the new technology has influenced Arabic calligraphy, but this does not mean the decay of Arabic calligraphy as an art. As this study shows, the challenge is not to the art, but to the artist

Classifying Arabic Fonts Based on Design Characteristics: PANOSE-A

In desktop publishing, fonts are essential components in each document design. With the development of font design software and tools, there are thousands of digital fonts. Increasing the number of available fonts makes selecting an appropriate font, which best serves the objective of a design, not an intuitive issue. Designers can search for a font like any other file types by using general information such as name and file format. But for document design purposes, the design features or visual characteristics of fonts are more meaningful for designers than font file information. Therefore, representing fonts’ design features by searchable and comparable data would facilitate searching and selecting a desirable font. One solution is to represent a font’s design features by a code composed of several digits. This solution has been implemented as a computerized system called PANOSE-1 for Latin script fonts. PANOSE-1 is a system for classifying and matching typefaces based on design features. It is composed of 10 digits, where each digit represents a specific design feature. It is used within several font management tools as an option for ordering and searching fonts based on their design features. It is also used in font replacement processes when an application or an operating system detects a missing font in an immigrant document or website. Currently, PANOSE-1 is only defined for fonts that have Latin characters. Therefore there is a need for providing a model that describes and classifies fonts with Arabic characters. In this research, a new model PANOSE-A is defined to extend PANOSE-1 coverage to support Arabic characters. The model defines eight digits in addition to the first digit of PANOSE-1which indicates the font script and family type. Each digit describes a visual or a design feature and takes value between 0-15. The meaning of 0 and 1 values is similar to what is defined for PANOSE-1. Each of the remaining values indicates a specific variation of its represented feature. Weight and contrast are two essential features in any font design. Two digits of the models describe the common variations of the weight and contrast features for text fonts. Another four digits describe the shape of some strokes that usually vary in their design between fonts. One digit describes the end shape of terminal strokes using three letters with different terminal strokes. Another digit describes the shape of the bowl stroke while the third digit describes the shape of curved stroke. The thresholds that used to define each shape class are taken from Naskh calligraphy guidelines. The fourth digit describes the shape of rounded strokes with enclosed counter. The shape classes of this digit are based on how the counter shape is similar to one of five geometric shapes. These basic geometric shapes are triangle, square, rectangular, oval and circle. The last two digits describe the characteristics of two important vertical references of the Arabic font design which are tooth and loop heights. The reliability of the model was evaluated by conducting two clustering processes on 30 fonts of Naskh style. The proposed PANOSE-A model was used to construct a similarity matrix for one the clustering processes while the other clustering process used a similarity matrix that was produced by using a font matching tool. The result clusters of the two clustering processes have been evaluated by silhouette coefficient. Silhouette is a method to measure data consistency validation within clusters. It indicates how objects are similar in their own cluster compared to other clusters. Clustering result based on the similarity matrix produced by font matching tool got 97.04 while using clustering result based on the similarity measured by PANOSE-A model got 98.24.The similarity between the results of the two clustering processes has been estimated, indicating that the model succeeded in classifying 85% of the fonts as a font matching tool

Akchessima: Latin Type Design for Digital Chinese (Seal Script) Typefaces

As multi-language text layout and Chinese/Japanese/Korean typefaces has become an important topic in modern day typography, the visual match-making between Latin and Chinese writing is a very important issue in type design. For this thesis project, Latin letters are designed based on a Chinese seal script style typeface, in seek of a design principle of matching Latin letter forms for Chinese calligraphic styles, originating from different writing tools and traditions. There is not one universal principle that would apply on all different Chinese typeface styles. However, based on research of writing habits and technology, multiple methods have been developed in this thesis, which could be used while processing any type design projects