Style combination · Contrasts

Contemporary Arabic × Post-Binary Typography

Both extend a typeface's character set for a language need, but dual-script design matches two scripts for neutral, institutional legibility, while post-binary type invents new characters within one script and keeps them visible as a political statement.

From the research on Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)

Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Post-Binary Typography

Oversized black, red and magenta lettering fills an off-white poster divided into narrow columns. The upper row spells “même” in stretched and kinked letters, with large Arabic lettering below and rectangular colour bars along the top, middle and bottom. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Post-Binary Typography, the form from Contemporary Arabic, the composition from Contemporary Arabic. Not a real or historical work.

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 Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)

Type from Post-Binary Typography: Experimental & distorted
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Contemporary Arabic: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Contemporary Arabic: Rectilinear
Ornament-free
Composition from Contemporary Arabic: Column grid
Modular grid
Surface from Post-Binary Typography: Flat

The type

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

Display · Post-Binary Typography

Tomorrow

Jost, standing in for BBB Poppins TN (Eugénie Bidaut and Camille Circlude, 2022), after Jonny Pinhorn's Poppins

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 Post-Binary Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)

#f7f6f2 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#c1272d accent · 18%
#d42a7f accent · 14%
#0f6e6e accent · 10%
#ee5d63 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f6f2;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #c1272d;
  --accent-2: #d42a7f;
  --accent-3: #0f6e6e;
  --accent-4: #ee5d63;
  --font-display: "Jost", sans-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.

Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type): This is the living practice of a queer, trans and non-binary community and of named designers, most of them active: do not use the glyphs as decorative 'Pride' texture or for brand campaigns that ignore the people they were made for; follow the CUTE that comes with the fonts: credit and link the designers, keep the files complete, give on its sliding scale (€300 to €1,000 for a cultural institution) and respect its answer to companies that want an inclusive image to pinkwash: 'Look elsewhere'; and never attribute a generated poster or font to the collective or prompt an image model with its members' names. Image models invent fake ligatures and misspell French, so set real inclusive words in the actual fonts and have them checked by people who use them. Type the median-dot forms and let the OpenType features display the glyphs, rather than pasting QUNI's Private Use Area characters, which screen readers cannot voice meaningfully and which turn into blanks or wrong signs when copied or shown in another font. In France, inclusive writing with the point médian is proscribed in schools by circular (2021) and a Senate bill sought to ban it more widely (2023), so check before setting official French public documents this way.