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World region

Graphic-design styles from the Middle East and North Africa

Styles that took shape in the Middle East and North Africa, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 37 of them. The earliest began in antiquity, the latest in 2022. Of these, 19 are still in use.

The 37 styles

Oldest first. Each has its own page: its design choices, where it comes from, and real works.

Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present · Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Traditionc. 690–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southern EuropeA visual system shared across the Islamic world in which proportioned calligraphy, compass-and-straightedge geometry and the vegetal arabesque carry meaning and beauty in place of figurative imagery.
Armenian Manuscript Illuminationc. 862–1800 · Middle East & North Africa, Eastern EuropeThe illuminated books of the Armenian Church, from the Gospel of Queen Mlke (c. 862) and the Etchmiadzin Gospels (989) to the last manuscripts around 1800.
Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)c. 1100–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaSquare Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)c. 1300–1700 · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe court book painting of Iran and Timurid Herat, formed in Mongol Tabriz from Islamic, Byzantine and Chinese models: from Rashid al-Din's Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (1314) and the Great Mongol Shahnama to Behzad's Herat and the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ending in the album pages of Safavid Isfahan.
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphyc. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South AsiaThe Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it.
Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)c. 1400–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southeast AsiaPictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing1822–1956 · Middle East & North AfricaThe page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures.
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012 · Middle East & North AfricaIran's popular picture-stories in two media.
Bezalel School1906–1929 · Middle East & North AfricaThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design1925–1960 · Middle East & North AfricaThe pictorial poster, label and ticket art of the young Turkish Republic, led by İhap Hulusi Görey after his Munich training in Ludwig Hohlwein's orbit, with Münif Fehim Özarman and, after 1943, Kenan Temizan.
Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996 · Middle East & North AfricaThe painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo.
Hebrew Poster Lettering & Early Israeli State Design1934–1974 · Middle East & North AfricaThe commercial and state graphics of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine and early Israel, made in Tel Aviv from 1934 by designers who had trained in Berlin and Vienna: Franz Krausz, Otte Wallish and the Shamir brothers.
Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
Hurufiyya Calligraphic Modernism1949–present · Middle East & North AfricaA pan-Arab and Iranian modern-art movement, begun by Madiha Omar in the late 1940s, that freed the letters of the Arabic script from text and used them as abstract visual units.
Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design1952–1990 · Middle East & North AfricaThe 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.
Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)1956–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists.
Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design1959–2000 · Middle East & North AfricaThe posters of Istanbul's first generation of professional graphic designers for theatres, films, festivals and exhibitions.
Iranian Modernist Graphic Design1960–present · Middle East & North AfricaIranian graphic design came of age in the 1960s and 1970s.
Casablanca School Graphic Modernism1962–1987 · Middle East & North AfricaA postcolonial modernism formed at the Casablanca fine-art school under Farid Belkahia, where Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabâa and colleagues set Amazigh rugs and jewellery, painted ceilings and calligraphy beside a Bauhaus-style merging of art, craft and design.
Palestinian Resistance Poster1965–1993 · Middle East & North AfricaThe poster culture of the Palestinian national movement after 1965, issued by the PLO and its factions from Beirut and other Arab capitals for refugee camps, homes and solidarity audiences abroad.
Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)1968–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Southeast Asia, North AmericaThe graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond.
Turkish Weekly Humour Magazines (Gırgır to Uykusuz)1972–2025 · Middle East & North AfricaIstanbul's weekly cartoon magazines, from the Aral brothers' Gırgır (1972), which sold up to about half a million copies, through the chain of breakaways that followed it: Limon, LeMan, Penguen and Uykusuz.
Lebanese Civil War Party Poster1975–1990 · Middle East & North AfricaThe posters that some twenty parties and militias pasted on the walls of Beirut and other towns between 1975 and 1990, marking each quarter as one faction's territory.
Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988 · Middle East & North AfricaPosters, murals and stamps of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq, which fused the red-white-black international revolutionary poster with Persian miniature and coffeehouse narrative painting.
Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedOne fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedArabic letters sprayed, rolled and brushed at the scale of buildings.
Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design2004–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedA 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.
Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)2007–present · Middle East & North AfricaAdult comics magazines edited by Arab artists' collectives since 2007, at times with a ministry grant or an NGO partner: Samandal in Beirut, TokTok in Cairo, Lab619 in Tunis and Skefkef in Casablanca.
Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014 · Middle East & North AfricaThe street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper.
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024 · Middle East & North AfricaProtest graphics of the Syrian uprising from 2011, made to be photographed and shared online rather than to last on a wall.
Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedGraphics of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinians, made by Palestinian artists, the diaspora and supporters worldwide and shared mainly online, above all since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
Woman, Life, Freedom Protest Graphics (Iran and the Diaspora)2022–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedPosters and digital graphics made in Iran and the diaspora after Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in morality-police custody in September 2022.

The design choices they share

The choices these styles make more often than the 359 styles in the atlas as a whole, most telling first.

Brush & pen calligraphyin 33 of 37
Type as imagein 25 of 37
Typography onlyin 23 of 37
Pen, brush & inkin 23 of 37
Spiritual & sacredin 22 of 37
Tight settingin 15 of 37
Borders & framesin 22 of 37
Folk & sacred symbolsin 21 of 37

Their branches

When they began

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