Stylogeny combining Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book × Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

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Style combination · Pairs well

Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book × Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

Same cities and decades: hand-drawn Arabic titles and flat offset illustration give a warmer face to magazine and periodical pages whose body text was often set in simplified type (books were slower to accept it).

From the research on Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

Mix them and make something Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

RiseCairo–Beirut Arab × Machine-Age Simplified
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book, their arrangement from Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type, the finish from Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

Type from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book
Colour from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book
Form from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book
Composition from Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type
Surface from Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

02

The type

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

Display · Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book

Rise

Rakkas, standing in for Hand-drawn Kufic-derived Arabic display lettering

Text · Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

Arabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen. From 1947 reformers cut down the four positional forms of each letter: Nasri Khattar's Unified Arabic gave every letter one shape, set apart like Latin type in its detached print form, and Linotype's Simplified Arabic (1959, made with Beirut's al-Hayat) mostly two, so a newspaper fount fitted one 90-channel magazine; ASV Codar in Morocco gave the vowels letters of their own. Flat-based, even and with few ligatures, it became the common face of Arab newspapers and lives on in Windows system fonts.

Newsreader; Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type used Mrowa-Linotype Simplified Arabic (Kamel Mrowa, Nabih Jaroudi and Walter Tracy for Linotype & Machinery; Series 2 with 3, 1959) and its redesign by Jaroudi, Series 8 with 9 (1962), named Yakout in 1967 and Intertype Abridged Arabic

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book, with a counter-accent from Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type

  • #f0e6cf ground · 36%
  • #1c1a17 ink · 14%
  • #e1a930 accent · 18%
  • #1d4f9e accent · 14%
  • #c4362c accent · 10%
  • #cfc6b0 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e6cf;
  --ink: #1c1a17;
  --accent-1: #e1a930;
  --accent-2: #1d4f9e;
  --accent-3: #c4362c;
  --accent-4: #cfc6b0;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type: Arabic is a living script and the script of the Qur'an, and simplified type was long resisted for books, government work and the Qur'an, so do not set Qur'anic verses, hadith or the names of God and the Prophet in reduced or detached forms, or use them as texture. Set Arabic right to left with correct joining, never pass off the disconnected letters of a software error as Unified Arabic, have every word read by a fluent reader, and do not present script reform as the correction of a deficient script: the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo rejected ASV Codar in 1958, and the type historian Titus Nemeth calls the survival of simplified forms in digital fonts a legacy of technical compromise that digital type no longer needs.

04

The two styles

A vintage-style illustration shows a woman in a patterned headscarf and red embroidered dress holding a large key, with olive branches in the foreground. Behind her are sailboats, a waterfront town with a dome and minaret, birds, and a large golden sun; red Arabic lettering spans the top. 1952–1990 · Middle East & North Africa Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design The illustrated book, magazine and children's-book culture that ran from Cairo's post-1952 publishing houses to the Arab nationalist and leftist presses of Beirut. Hand-drawn Arabic titles reworked from Kufic and everyday scripts, rough, expressive pen-and-brush drawing and flat offset colour gave mass readers and children a modern, decolonised Arabic page. Helmi el-Touni and Mohieddin Ellabbad also brought folk ornament and borders back to it. 1947–present · Middle East & North Africa Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type Arabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen. From 1947 reformers cut down the four positional forms of each letter: Nasri Khattar's Unified Arabic gave every letter one shape, set apart like Latin type in its detached print form, and Linotype's Simplified Arabic (1959, made with Beirut's al-Hayat) mostly two, so a newspaper fount fitted one 90-channel magazine; ASV Codar in Morocco gave the vowels letters of their own. Flat-based, even and with few ligatures, it became the common face of Arab newspapers and lives on in Windows system fonts.

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