The Falak ACE/OTL Project, part 2

On May 30th, 2013, I moved from Beirut to Amsterdam to become an apprentice in DecoType’s ACE technology (for Arabic type design and typography). I had no friends, job, or house and was in the delightful company of the different shades of Dutch grey skies. For a Mediterranean person, that grey was the most difficult part of the move. I freelanced as a graphic designer to survive, mainly typesetting complex Arabic books (in DecoType fonts) for Brill Publishers. They will always remain a very dear client since they indirectly supported my apprenticeship in using ACE technology.

After 8 years of making the conscious decision not to design any typeface before having (what I esteemed) sufficient knowledge about the Arabic script and how it works, it was time for me to finally come up with a typeface project. I sketched diverse pathways during most of 2013. And given the lack of different kinds of Arabic fonts in the world, you can imagine it was somewhat challenging to choose only one direction. I also encountered a classic Arabic type design problem: How do you start building an Arabic typeface? With which letters? I also faced one of my personal, recurring design issues: How do I retain the ductus of Arabic script while making letter shapes “modern” or “contemporary” (with all the ambiguity of these words on top of that).

My process began with Naskh calligraphy as a source. I quickly learned that if I started with my handwriting, the sketches didn’t turn out right: Proportions were always a bit off, and I had to tweak contrast and letter axes quite a lot. So from that moment on, I always follow the penmanship of a master calligrapher, or for any source – whether historical or vernacular – I make sure that it has high artistic quality (to my eyes) or simply a good dose of emotional value.

It was in Central America that I found my design brief. Back in February 2014, I was sitting by an estuary on the Pacific coast of El Salvador surrounded by tall coco trees and trying hard not to think about the salt water and sweet water crocodiles that were roaming around in there. I had brought a small square sketchbook with off-white paper to enjoy drawing whenever we weren’t moving from one beautiful place to another. There, I made a few sketches that became the starting point of the Falak Project.

I searched to make a clean, clear, geometric, low-contrast Arabic typeface for fictive texts and poetry. I also set out to build the same design in two technologies. I wanted to test the common points and differences between ACE (Advanced Composition Engine) and the widespread OTL (OpenType Layout) technology.

To be fully honest, I’m still unsure I can answer with clarity: What does an Arabic typeface that is clean, clear, geometric, and low-contrast look like? I’m now building another one, and it still feels like the design parameters are endless and that I cannot foresee the general shaping of the outcome. It’s very different in the case of Latin. If one sets out to make a geometric Sans, the result is – to a certain extent – foreseeable. That’s why I love making Arabic type, there’s a never-ending sense of discovery involved.

Returning to the Falak Project: I now had a project brief and the beginning of a digital typeface. It was already Spring 2014. One day, while my studio-mates were listening to my type story, they suggested I apply for a subsidy to support the work on the project. Coming from Lebanon, I didn’t know these things were possible. So, I submitted an application to the Creative Industries Fund NL.

It was December 24th, 2014. I was having a fashion crisis before a festive family dinner. So I checked my emails to distract myself. I knew the grant committee would have answered by then. No emails. Of course, I also knew they would send something by post, and I wasn’t in Amsterdam to find out. Getting more desperate, I signed into my bank account. By then, I had finally managed to slip on one foot of my shiny leggings. The other one was still dangling in space. And there it was, the first chunk of my project budget already in my account. Unbelievable. I may have been the happiest person on the planet that night.

However, after sending out the grant application, I showed the project to my former teacher, Mayda, and she said the typeface looked like it would be great for children’s books. That was not what I wanted. I wanted a kind of serious book typeface. She made me realize I was trying to do too much all at once: I wanted to draw a font that followed all the rules of Naskh grammar (to understand them), geometric, and low contrast. That was excessive for me at the time. So, I dropped the geometric part and returned to the drawing table.

I powered through the typeface development at the start of the new year (2015). This was the most exciting moment of the project. I don’t think I learned as much about Arabic type as in these first two years of making Falak ACE and the start of the OTL version. This project truly changed my life. The next steps were questions that brought with them bigger questions: How is Naskh built? Do I break any of the script grammar rules? How does contrast work in Naskh, and in other Arabic scripts? Which proportions do I adopt and why? And how low of a low contrast do I create and why? With an ocean of questions, I went sailing.

coming next: The Falak ACE/OTL Project, part 3: Type Design