Style combination · Pairs well

Contemporary Arabic × Seoul Independent Graphic Design

Both answer the type industry's turn to multi-script families, as Favorit Hangul pairs with Dinamo's Latin; borrow that culture's matched, equal-weight scripts when a Seoul poster or book must run in Korean and English.

From the research on Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)

Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Seoul Independent Graphic Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Seoul Independent Graphic Design, their arrangement from Seoul Independent Graphic Design, the finish from Seoul Independent Graphic Design. 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 Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)

Type from Contemporary Arabic: Humanist sans
Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Colour from Contemporary Arabic: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Geometric primitives
Non-representational
Composition from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Repetition & rhythm
Central symmetry
Surface from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Flat

The type

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

Display · Contemporary Arabic

Grid

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

Text · Seoul Independent Graphic Design

Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small. They design for low-budget culture (exhibitions, festivals, humanities books) and for their own imprints and journals. Typography carries the work: Hangul is reshaped within or beyond its syllable blocks, set beside Latin as one system and enlarged into the picture. Layouts are often centred, in one colour, with circles, repetition and letters treated as objects. Runs are short, in offset, risograph or silkscreen.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Seoul Independent Graphic Design used Favorit Hangul (Yoon Mingoo with Dinamo, 2019), a Hangul companion to Dinamo's Latin Favorit, part of the type industry's turn to multi-script families and Protoform, Sulki & Min's first Korean font family, drawn by the designers themselves

The colours

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

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)

#f7f6f2 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#c1272d accent · 18%
#2448d8 accent · 14%
#0f6e6e accent · 10%
#ff5aa5 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f6f2;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #c1272d;
  --accent-2: #2448d8;
  --accent-3: #0f6e6e;
  --accent-4: #ff5aa5;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", 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.

Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene): These are living, named designers and studios, so never attribute a generated poster or book to Sulki & Min, Everyday Practice or any other studio, and never prompt an image model with their names. Image models often produce pseudo-Hangul: have every Hangul word written or checked by a Korean reader, or leave the text out. Do not paste hanbok, dancheong patterns or a taegeuk emblem on as decoration to signal 'Korean'; where the studios touch such ideas (Sulki & Min's patterns on Hangul vowels and yin-yang), they work them out through the structure of the letters. Choi Sung Min warns that the pressure on Korean designers to find a 'true self' is a problematic Orientalism, and this scene works through type and concept, not national motifs.

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. 2005–present · East Asia Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene) Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small. They design for low-budget culture (exhibitions, festivals, humanities books) and for their own imprints and journals. Typography carries the work: Hangul is reshaped within or beyond its syllable blocks, set beside Latin as one system and enlarged into the picture. Layouts are often centred, in one colour, with circles, repetition and letters treated as objects. Runs are short, in offset, risograph or silkscreen.