Style combination · Pairs well

Arabic Calligraffiti × Contemporary Arabic

Set names, dates and captions in a dual-script type family beside a calligraffiti wall, so the gesture stays the image and the information stays legible.

From the research on Arabic Calligraffiti

Mix them and make something Arabic Calligraffiti Contemporary Arabic

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Contemporary Arabic, their arrangement from Arabic Calligraffiti, the finish from Arabic Calligraffiti. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Arabic Calligraffiti Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design

Type from Arabic Calligraffiti: Brush & pen calligraphy
Type as image
Colour from Contemporary Arabic: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Contemporary Arabic: Rectilinear
Ornament-free
Composition from Arabic Calligraffiti: Organic flow
Full bleed
Surface from Arabic Calligraffiti: Painterly brushwork
Hard offset shadow

Contemporary Arabic avoids painterly brushwork: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Arabic Calligraffiti

New

Rakkas, standing in for Freehand Arabic script sprayed or painted rather than written with a reed pen, after calligraphy but without its rules or a uniform hand (as the Museum für Islamische Kunst describes eL Seed's work)

Text · Contemporary Arabic

A twenty-first-century type culture that redraws Arabic as a family matched to a Latin companion in weight, proportion and contrast, so the two scripts can share a page, screen or sign as equals. The Khatt Foundation's Typographic Matchmaking (2007) did much to launch it, and foundries such as 29LT and TPTQ Arabic carried it forward. It favours low-contrast Kufi- and Naskh-derived forms, a firm horizontal baseline and mirrored grids for identities, wayfinding and interfaces.

Fira Sans; Contemporary Arabic used Frutiger Arabic and Helvetica Arabic and 29LT UA Neo B and UA Neo N

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Contemporary Arabic, with a counter-accent from Arabic Calligraffiti. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Arabic Calligraffiti Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design

#f7f6f2 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#c1272d accent · 18%
#f07f1e accent · 14%
#0f6e6e accent · 10%
#f6c32b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f6f2;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #c1272d;
  --accent-2: #f07f1e;
  --accent-3: #0f6e6e;
  --accent-4: #f6c32b;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
  --font-text: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Arabic Calligraffiti: Many works carry Qur'anic verses, the names of God or devotional sayings, written on mosques and in religious communities: never use such text as texture or put it on floors, footwear or throwaway items, and have every Arabic or Persian word read and approved by a fluent reader before it is painted or printed. The style stretches and interlaces letters, so put a Qur'anic verse or a name of God into it only when a skilled Arabic-script writer composes it and the mosque or community approves it, as at the Jara Mosque; never digitally warp, crop or mirror existing sacred text. Never fill a design with invented pseudo-Arabic, which image models readily produce; do not ask an image model for eL Seed's Liquid Alphabet or any named writer's hand, and never present a generated wall as their work. The best-known walls rest on the consent of governors, imams, priests and residents, so get the owner's permission (spraying without it is a crime in most places), work with the people of the place, and commission and credit Arabic-script writers rather than faking the script for a brand.

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design: Arabic must be set with correct contextual shaping and right-to-left direction; disconnected or reversed letters are a common and offensive error. Have every Arabic word checked by a fluent reader, avoid setting Qur'anic verses or the names of God and the Prophet as decorative texture, and commission or credit Arabic type designers rather than deriving Arabic glyphs from a Latin font.