Style combination · Pairs well

Contemporary Arabic × Bulaq Naskh Book Printing

Set long reading text in an Amiri-style calligraphic Naskh and use a low-contrast contemporary Arabic sans for headings, captions and screens, so each register does one job.

From the research on Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing

Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Bulaq Naskh Book Printing

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing, their arrangement from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing, the finish from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing. 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.

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing

Type from Contemporary Arabic: Humanist sans
Grotesque & neo-grotesque

Bulaq Naskh Book Printing avoids grotesque & neo-grotesque: this is where the two pull against each other.
Colour from Contemporary Arabic: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing: Rectilinear
Borders & frames
Composition from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing: Classical text block
Central symmetry
Surface from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing: Paper & letterpress bite
Flat

The type

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

Display · Contemporary Arabic

Index

Fira Sans, standing in for Frutiger Arabic and Helvetica Arabic (Nadine Chahine)

Text · Bulaq Naskh Book Printing

The page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures. It printed army manuals, laws, textbooks, translated science, the Arabic classics and the official gazette. Calligraphers drew its later types, Mirza Sanglakh and then Muhammad Jaʿfar, whose 1905–06 body type was the basis of the 1924 Qur'an and lives on as Khaled Hosny's Amiri.

Libre Caslon Text; Bulaq Naskh Book Printing used Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh body type, 1905–06, drawn by the calligrapher Muhammad Jaʿfar Bey and Bulaq Naskh and Nastaʿlīq types by the Persian calligrapher Mirza Sanglakh, made for Muhammad Ali's press

The colours

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

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing

#f7f6f2 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#c1272d accent · 18%
#7a5236 accent · 14%
#0f6e6e accent · 10%
#cdbb93 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f6f2;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #c1272d;
  --accent-2: #7a5236;
  --accent-3: #0f6e6e;
  --accent-4: #cdbb93;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing: The press also set the Qur'an (the 1924 Cairo edition) and hadith collections such as the Sultaniyya Sahih al-Bukhari, and Bulaq-style Naskh and Amiri are still used for Qur'anic and religious text, so never crop, mirror or distort Qur'anic verses or the names of God and the Prophet, use them as texture, or put them on floors, footwear or throwaway packaging. Set Arabic right to left with correct contextual shaping, have every word read by a fluent reader, never fill a layout with pseudo-Arabic, and never present a generated page as a historical Bulaq imprint.