Style combination · Contrasts
Contemporary Arabic × Urdu Katib Lithography
Simplified Kufi- and Naskh-based dual-script type flattens the stacked Nastaʿlīq ligature; choose deliberately between the katib's cascade and a screen-friendly baseline.
The katib's stacked Nastaʿlīq cascade is everything a screen-optimised Arabic sans gives up; quote it where warmth and history matter more than efficiency.
Mix them and make something Contemporary Arabic Urdu Katib Lithography
01
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 Urdu Katib Lithography
- Type from Urdu Katib Lithography
- Colour from Contemporary Arabic
- Form from Contemporary Arabic
- Composition from Urdu Katib Lithography
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Contemporary Arabic avoids horror vacui: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Urdu Katib Lithography
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Contemporary Arabic, with a counter-accent from Urdu Katib Lithography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Urdu Katib Lithography
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#f7f6f2ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#c1272daccent · 18% -
#0f6e6eaccent · 14% -
#c9bfa6accent · 10% -
#8c8c8caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f7f6f2;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #c1272d;
--accent-2: #0f6e6e;
--accent-3: #c9bfa6;
--accent-4: #8c8c8c;
--font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
--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.
Urdu Katib Lithography: Urdu pages often carry Qur'anic phrases, the names of God and the Prophet and religious verse; never use Nastaʿlīq as meaningless texture or set invented text that imitates it, and have every word read by a fluent Urdu reader. Katibs were rarely credited; name the calligrapher where known, and commission a working khushnawees rather than tracing archival pages.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Contemporary Arabic
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Roll a matched Arabic–Latin family through a standards manual so both scripts carry the identity with equal authority.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Use a strict, mirrored grid and a neutral sans so Arabic and Latin columns align in rhythm and weight.
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type Pairs well · Its digital successor: dual-script families pair Arabic with a matched Latin while keeping the firm baseline, even colour and reduced stacking that simplification made familiar. 29LT's UA Neo (2013), detached revivals of Khattar's Unified Arabic, is where the two touch.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Pairs well · 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.
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type) Contrasts · 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.
- Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design Contrasts · Turkey replaced Arabic letters with Latin in 1928, and Emin Barın carried calligraphic habits into the new script; contemporary dual-script type design keeps both scripts and matches them as equals. Compare the two to show replacement against coexistence.
- Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing Pairs well · 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.
- Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef) Contrasts · Both set Arabic beside Latin, but that type culture matches the two scripts in font families on rational, mirrored grids, while these anthologies letter both scripts by hand, one story at a time, and mirror whole pages so that the reader turns the magazine round with the script.
With Urdu Katib Lithography
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Contrasts · Movable-type jobbing print is the technology Urdu turned down; set its centred, mixed metal faces against a flowing, hand-ruled lithographic page.
- Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) Pairs well · Both are handwritten public text pages; use their crowded, hand-ruled columns and enlarged brush headlines for an editorial or protest broadsheet.
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Pairs well · Crown a dense Nastaʿlīq news or book page with a manuscript-style illuminated headpiece or a Thuluth masthead drawn from the khatt tradition.
- Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type) Contrasts · Urdu kept the katib's hand on the litho stone because type could not hold Nastaʿlīq, while Javaji took a lithographed almanac into metal type; choose a written page or a set one deliberately.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Contrasts · Urdu turned down type to keep the calligrapher's hand while Song–Ming printing depersonalised the brush for the block cutter; choose deliberately between a written page and a cut one.
- Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design Contrasts · Urdu print kept hand-written Arabic-script lithography for another century, while Turkey abolished Arabic letters in 1928; set the two side by side to show two answers to modern print.
- Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting) Pairs well · The same lithographed Nastaʿlīq page culture across Iran and India: Khoi's Tehran Shahnameh followed the pictures of the Persian-language Bombay edition of 1846, written by Reza al-Hoseini al-Shirazi. Add hatched, framed scenes to a katib's dense columns for an illustrated Persian or Urdu text page.
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type Contrasts · Urdu made the opposite choice, keeping the katib's hand because metal type could not carry Nastaʿlīq; set side by side they show economy against calligraphic fidelity.