Style combination · Pairs well

Contemporary Arabic × Ottoman Tughra

Keep hand-drawn calligraphy for the mark itself and set the running text in a well-made contemporary Arabic typeface with a matched Latin companion, instead of imitating Dîvânî in body text.

From the research on Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Ottoman Tughra

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Ottoman Tughra, their arrangement from Ottoman Tughra, the finish from Contemporary Arabic. 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 Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Type from Ottoman Tughra: Brush & pen calligraphy
Type as image
Colour from Contemporary Arabic: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Ottoman Tughra: Emblems & badges
Whiplash line
Composition from Ottoman Tughra: Single focal point
Extreme scale contrast
Surface from Contemporary Arabic: Flat

The type

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

Display · Ottoman Tughra

Public

Cinzel, standing in for Celî dîvânî, the monumental form for panels and inscriptions, mastered by the leading dîvânî calligraphers such as Sâmi Efendi and Kâmil Akdik; after the 1928 alphabet reform it lived on in a few celî dîvânî panels by famous calligraphers of the last generation, and dîvânî is still taught in Cairo

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 Ottoman Tughra. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

#f7f6f2 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#c1272d accent · 18%
#2e4ea6 accent · 14%
#0f6e6e accent · 10%
#bf9a52 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f6f2;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #c1272d;
  --accent-2: #2e4ea6;
  --accent-3: #0f6e6e;
  --accent-4: #bf9a52;
  --font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
  --font-text: "Fira Sans", sans-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.

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy: A tughra is the personal mark of one sovereign and spells his name with a prayer for victory: do not redraw a historical sultan's tughra as a brand logo, product stamp or decorative texture, do not present a new design as a historical one, and never fill the form with invented pseudo-Arabic. The calligraphy behind the tughra and Dîvânî, hüsn-i hat, is a living craft passed on through apprenticeship (UNESCO Representative List, 2021), so commission a hattat for a new tughra and have every word read by a fluent reader of Ottoman Turkish. The tughra is also a sign of Ottoman rule: where that rule is remembered as conquest, as in parts of the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and the Arab world, or is invoked by nationalist politics, it can read as a claim to that rule, so check how the audience will read it. The tughra form is also used for sacred texts, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith and the names of the founders of Sufi orders, and Popov showed a 'tughra of Allah' in Kazan; such compositions follow the parent tradition's rules: never crop, distort or mirror them, and keep them off floors, footwear and throwaway surfaces.

The two styles

A bilingual Latin and Arabic type specimen sheet on an off-white background features oversized black Nūr and نور lettering, gray sample headlines, and four font weights. Fine rules divide character sets, five circular colour swatches, letter-construction diagrams, and sample sizes, with restrained red and teal accents.

2004–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networked Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design 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. c. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy The Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it. From Orhan in 1324 each sultan had his own tughra, composed at his accession and redrawn by hand on every decree: his name and titles stacked at the base, three tall shafts, two nested loops sweeping left and arms reaching right. Struck on coins and carved over gates, it was at its grandest lettered in blue outlined in gold, its loops filled with scrolls and blossoms. Below it ran Dîvânî, a slanting, tightly packed hand. A counterpart of the European royal cypher: one owned mark carried across every medium.