Style combination · Contrasts
Ottoman Tughra × Square Kufic
Square Kufic binds Arabic letters to a square grid of straight strokes; the tughra frees them into sweeping loops and tall shafts. Use the grid for a modular, tiled emblem and the tughra for a single flourishing signature.
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.
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)
- Type from Square Kufic
- Colour from Square Kufic
- Form from Ottoman Tughra
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Square Kufic avoids whiplash line: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Ottoman Tughra
- Surface from Ottoman Tughra
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Square Kufic
Notice
Reem Kufi, standing in for Bannāʾī (maʿqilī): square Kufic laid in glazed and unglazed bricks or tiles, one brick or tile per grid unit, with stroke and gap of equal width
Text · Ottoman Tughra
The Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it. From Orhan in 1324 each sultan had his own tughra, composed at his accession and redrawn by hand on every decree: his name and titles stacked at the base, three tall shafts, two nested loops sweeping left and arms reaching right. Struck on coins and carved over gates, it was at its grandest lettered in blue outlined in gold, its loops filled with scrolls and blossoms. Below it ran Dîvânî, a slanting, tightly packed hand. A counterpart of the European royal cypher: one owned mark carried across every medium.
Bodoni Moda; Ottoman Tughra used The tughra's own scheme and Dîvânî (Ottoman hatt-ı çep), the chancery hand of fermans, berats and nişans
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Square Kufic, with a counter-accent from Ottoman Tughra. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)
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#f3eee3ground · 39% -
#161616ink · 15% -
#2a9ea6accent · 20% -
#2e4ea6accent · 15% -
#bf9a52accent · 11%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3eee3;
--ink: #161616;
--accent-1: #2a9ea6;
--accent-2: #2e4ea6;
--accent-3: #bf9a52;
--font-display: "Reem Kufi", cursive;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}Use it with care
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy: A tughra is the personal mark of one sovereign and spells his name with a prayer for victory: do not redraw a historical sultan's tughra as a brand logo, product stamp or decorative texture, do not present a new design as a historical one, and never fill the form with invented pseudo-Arabic. The calligraphy behind the tughra and Dîvânî, hüsn-i hat, is a living craft passed on through apprenticeship (UNESCO Representative List, 2021), so commission a hattat for a new tughra and have every word read by a fluent reader of Ottoman Turkish. The tughra is also a sign of Ottoman rule: where that rule is remembered as conquest, as in parts of the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and the Arab world, or is invoked by nationalist politics, it can read as a claim to that rule, so check how the audience will read it. The tughra form is also used for sacred texts, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith and the names of the founders of Sufi orders, and Popov showed a 'tughra of Allah' in Kazan; such compositions follow the parent tradition's rules: never crop, distort or mirror them, and keep them off floors, footwear and throwaway surfaces.
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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Ottoman Tughra
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design 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.
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Contrasts · Kamon are compact, symmetric roundels of plants and objects in one flat colour, the tughra a sprawling, asymmetric word-mark; both show how one owned mark can travel across documents, cloth, objects and buildings.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Treat the tughra as an early counterpart of the corporate mark: one owned sign carried across decrees, coins, seals, gates and stamps. Borrow corporate modernism's discipline of application, but draw a new Arabic-script mark with a calligrapher rather than reducing a historical tughra to a logo.
- Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design Contrasts · The end of the sultanate in 1922 retired the tughra (its last on stamps that year), and the Republic replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet in 1928; its hand-lettered Latin posters are the deliberate opposite of the chancery's sultanic calligraphy.
- European Heraldry Contrasts · Both mark a sovereign's identity and authority, but heraldry does it with charges and tinctures on a shield and the tughra with the ruler's name alone; compare them to decide whether an identity should be pictured or written.
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Contrasts · The parent tradition repeats girih and arabesque edge to edge across a whole surface; the tughra concentrates the same calligraphy and illumination into one owned mark on an empty sheet. Choose the tughra when a design needs a single emblem, and the parent when it needs a field.
- Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Contrasts · The tughra makes a ruler's written name the giant emblem of a document; the Chinese seal keeps the name small, square and red beside the writing, so decide whether the signature is the picture or the counterweight.
With Square Kufic
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Contrasts · The parent tradition mixes cursive Thuluth and Naskh, girih stars and arabesque, while square Kufic keeps only the orthogonal grid; choose square Kufic when a design needs one rigid two-tone module, and the wider tradition when it needs curves, interlace and polychrome hierarchy.
- Bitmap & Pixel Graphics Pairs well · Both build letters from square units, and Sakkal compares building bricks to large pixels; set a bitmap Latin wordmark on the same cell size as a square-Kufic mark for a bilingual identity, but keep sacred formulas out of jokey, game-like pixel contexts.
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design Pairs well · Persian Wikipedia records bannāʾī in modern posters, logos and letterheads, and the atlas's Iranian modernist entry counts it among its Persian scripts; pair a square-Kufic title block with a Nastaʿlīq line and one flat figure for a Persian cultural poster.
- Andean Woven Graphic Systems Contrasts · T'oqapu also fill square cells on a grid, but with signs of rank rather than legible words; compare them to see how a grid can carry writing or emblem, and never blend the two sacred systems into a generic 'geometric' pattern.
- Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism Contrasts · The atlas's Soviet Central Asian entry recommends display capitals built on its mosaic or panjara module after the bannāʾī principle of tiles as pixels, for Cyrillic and Latin names only and with no Arabic script or pseudo-Kufic; use that route when a grid-built wordmark must stay secular, and square Kufic only for Arabic-script words read and approved by a fluent reader.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Pairs well · 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.
- Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design Pairs well · Erkmen set the Latin initials TİEM on a square-Kufic grid for the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi logo, and Ertel drew on Kufic for a Ministry of Culture logo; borrow the bannāʾī grid as a structure for a mark, but check what any Kufic letters spell before using them.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Contrasts · Both turn sacred words into a dense band that reads first as pattern, but square Kufic snaps letters to an orthogonal grid of equal stroke and gap, while vyaz stretches free pen-drawn letters upward and plugs the gaps with plant filler; choose the grid or the calligraphic interlace, and never blend the two sacred scripts into a generic 'ancient' texture.