A pledge for politicizing Arabic type design, overturning exclusionary notions of ‘quality,’ and challenging classist gatekeeping to the profession.

Arabic typography is booming. The rise of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as an economic giant, with Dubai as a hub for commerce, media, and advertising, generated a global spike in demand for Arabic design and typography. Facing limited technologies for Arabic font design and a shortage of Arabic type specialists, a wave of Euro-Anglo-centric graphic design programs began to emerge in the region. Add to this mix a host of communication agencies on the lookout for the “global modern look,” and you’ll get the perfect storm for oversimplified, Westernized Arabic typography in strictly apolitical mode.

This “apolitical” stance is, of course, highly political. Design is by no means alien to the context in which it is produced. The Arabic-speaking region is marked by a violent history of colonial exploitation, sectarian divides, and profit-driven economies. While native Arabic speakers were battling an overall lack of resources and structures to design Arabic typefaces, non-natives remained comfortable doing the job—a common practice since the historical onset of “Arabic” typefaces, which were produced in Europe. Much like the diverse cultures of the region, Arabic type was reduced, Orientalized, fetishized, vilified, and colonized. Through this limbo, it, too, became a homogenized category in need of deconstruction.

Who gets to design Arabic typography? Whose bodies labor behind this wave of Arabic typefaces? Is literacy a prerequisite for designing a script? Are thorough research and technical knowledge enough to engage with a certain culture? When does the fascination with a foreign script become problematic? How should we reposition Arabic type design within its historical and cultural context? To address some of these issues, I spoke with several type designers who are either from or have been operating in my home country, Lebanon. Although this tiny specimen of voices is not representative of the whole Arabic type design field—far less of the region’s diversity—it sheds some light on these issues.

Manufacturing the apolitical stance

Complementary to Egypt’s historical dominance over the music and film industry of the Arabic-speaking world, Lebanon took the lead in the professionalization of graphic design. In 1992, the American University of Beirut (AUB) opened what would become the first institutionalized graphic design program in the Arabic-speaking region. It was followed by dozens of technical and university-level courses across the country, all of which (except the public program offered by the Lebanese University) are private and charge costly tuition fees—one year of tuition at the AUB costs around US$34,000. This reality emphasizes the classist and extremely exclusionary infrastructures of the Lebanese higher education system. In the past thirty years, Beirut generated a substantial number of successful graphic designers, some of whom went on to direct multinational agencies or co-develop design programs across the region. I studied at the American University of Science and Technology (AUST), a private mid-range university in Beirut. Like many colleagues, after graduation, I worked for communication agencies in the Arab Gulf.

In the late 1990s, when Abu Dhabi and Dubai first emerged as economic powers attracting global corporations, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) started legally requiring Arabic-and-Latin versions of a commercial logo. This policy led to what Lebanese type designer Dr. Nadine Chahine labeled “Arabic Frankenstein:”the practice of deriving Arabic logos from cutting and pasting parts of Latin letters without a proper understanding of how Arabic letters are shaped. This first wave of Orientalist logos was followed by a demand for Arabic versions of popular Latin fonts used by global corporations. In early 2010, Linotype added Arabic “companions” to Helvetica, Frutiger, and Univers, all designed by Chahine, with other Western type foundries soon following the same path. In hindsight, Chahine acknowledges the challenges of that era, especially the lack of resources and research, and admits that today, she would tackle those designs differently.

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Students can contact me directly for the text: imadgebrayel@gmail.com