Style combination · Pairs well

Contemporary Arabic × Square Kufic

Set reading text in a low-contrast Kufi-derived Arabic sans matched to its Latin companion, and keep square Kufic for the emblem or panel, where legibility may give way to pattern.

From the research on Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)

Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Square Kufic

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Square Kufic, their arrangement from Square Kufic, 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 Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)

Type from Contemporary Arabic: Humanist sans
Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Colour from Square Kufic: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Square Kufic: Rectilinear
Geometric primitives
Composition from Square Kufic: Modular grid
Repetition & rhythm
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 · Contemporary Arabic

Public

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

Text · Square Kufic

Square Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it. A word can then fill a square, a band or a whole wall without gaps. It grew from twelfth- and thirteenth-century brick and tile inscriptions, probably first in Iran and Afghanistan, where one brick or glazed tile made one unit, and spread to Central Asia, Anatolia and the Maghreb. The names of God, Muhammad and ʿAli repeat across minarets and façades. In modern times it was revived for logos, the flag of Iran and calligraphy.

Reem Kufi; Square Kufic used Bannāʾī (maʿqilī) and Square Kufic drawn in ink on a squared (chequered) grid, as in the pattern drawings of the Topkapı Scroll and in modern calligraphy, usually without dots

The colours

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

Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)

#f3eee3 ground · 36%
#161616 ink · 14%
#2a9ea6 accent · 18%
#c1272d accent · 14%
#1e3d8f accent · 10%
#0f6e6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3eee3;
  --ink: #161616;
  --accent-1: #2a9ea6;
  --accent-2: #c1272d;
  --accent-3: #1e3d8f;
  --accent-4: #0f6e6e;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Reem Kufi", cursive;
}

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.

Square Kufic (Bannāʾī): Square-Kufic panels almost always spell sacred words: the names of God, Muhammad and ʿAli, the shahada, the takbir or Qur'anic phrases. Never crop, mirror or scramble them, never fill a surface with invented pseudo-Kufic as a pixel texture, and keep such text off floors, footwear, packaging and other throwaway surfaces. Some formulas belong to one community, such as the Shiʿi addition 'ʿAli is the friend of God', so have every composition read and approved by a fluent reader or a square-Kufic calligrapher, and commission or credit living calligraphers rather than tracing panels from buildings. The square-Kufic takbir band belongs to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran (since July 1980), and many Iranian opposition groups and diaspora communities fly the Lion and Sun flag or a plain tricolour instead, so do not quote the band as decorative Persian shorthand. Do not treat the names Muhammad and ʿAli together as neutral filler either: they interlock on the minarets of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, and they also appear in the blue brickwork of the Timurid shrine of the Sunni Sufi Khoja Ahmed Yasavi, so check how the community commissioning the work reads them.

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. 1100–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia Square Kufic (Bannāʾī) Square Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it. A word can then fill a square, a band or a whole wall without gaps. It grew from twelfth- and thirteenth-century brick and tile inscriptions, probably first in Iran and Afghanistan, where one brick or glazed tile made one unit, and spread to Central Asia, Anatolia and the Maghreb. The names of God, Muhammad and ʿAli repeat across minarets and façades. In modern times it was revived for logos, the flag of Iran and calligraphy.