Style combination · Pairs well
Persian Popular Narrative × Urdu Katib Lithography
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.
Mix them and make something Persian Popular Narrative 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.
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting) Urdu Katib Lithography
- Type from Urdu Katib Lithography
- Colour from Urdu Katib Lithography
- Form from Persian Popular Narrative
- Composition from Persian Popular Narrative
- Surface from Persian Popular Narrative
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Persian Popular Narrative
Iran's popular picture-stories in two media. From 1843, lithographed books printed handwritten Nastaʿlīq verse and pen drawings in one process: framed scenes in ruled text columns, hatched and dotted. Mirza Ali-Qoli Khoi, the most prolific illustrator, drew over 2,000 scenes for epics, romances and Karbala martyrologies in 1846–55. From the 20th century Hossein Qollar-Aqasi, Mohammad Modabber and pupils, heirs to storytellers' screens (pardeh) and taʿziyeh, painted epic and Karbala cycles on canvases for coffeehouses where storytellers performed, each figure named, into the 2010s.
Archivo; Persian Popular Narrative used Nastaʿlīq written by the lithographic scribes (kātebs), for verse and prose and Naskh, used for the Qur'an and some lithographed texts
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Urdu Katib Lithography, with a counter-accent from Persian Popular Narrative. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting) Urdu Katib Lithography
-
#eee6d2ground · 36% -
#141312ink · 14% -
#a32a2aaccent · 18% -
#c99a2eaccent · 14% -
#c9bfa6accent · 10% -
#5f5a52accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #eee6d2;
--ink: #141312;
--accent-1: #a32a2a;
--accent-2: #c99a2e;
--accent-3: #c9bfa6;
--accent-4: #5f5a52;
--font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting): Many of these images depict Imam Husayn, his family and the martyrs of Karbala, whose mourning is at the heart of Shiʿa devotion, and coffeehouse paintings of Karbala still hang in tekyehs and are shown during Muharram; some lithographs also depict the Prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims consider forbidden. The lithographers often veiled the faces of the Prophet, ʿAli and Husayn or ringed a holy face with a halo, so keep that convention and never supply a face for the Prophet, ʿAli or Husayn. Do not use these figures as decoration, parody or throwaway packaging, and have any Persian or Arabic text, including names of God, the Prophet and the Imams, read by a fluent reader. Coffeehouse paintings are the work of named painters and their pupils, so credit them, and commission Iranian painters and calligraphers rather than tracing their work.
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 Persian Popular Narrative
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Contrasts · Both are cheap popular print of heroes, saints and devils, but Posada's broadsheets set metal type beside relief cuts, while the Persian page is one handwritten lithograph in which calligraphy and drawing share the same pen.
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design Pairs well · Farshid Mesghali collaged coloured clippings of Qajar lithograph illustrations for a poster for the Tehran International Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults (dated November 1967 by Marzolph); crop and enlarge a hatched lithograph figure inside a modernist, white-ground layout.
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Contrasts · Kalighat pats isolate one bold brushed figure on bare paper; the Persian lithograph crowds a whole hatched scene into a frame inside verse columns. Choose between the open single figure and the packed narrative page.
- Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting) Pairs well · Its popular heir: the same epics in ruled columns of Nastaʿlīq, but drawn in hatched black ink for lithography; pair a court-style coloured frame with a lithographic line drawing to move between luxury and street register.
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.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Contrasts · 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.
- 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.
- 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.