Arabic typography is one of the simplest and simultaneously most complex forms of art. The language’s different visual reproductions and renditions are used in the world’s largest and most sophisticated museums, and studied by renowned scholars around the world. However, with the technological boom of typography and fonts, Arabic type did not get the same attention that other languages have gotten, leaving the design world with few Arabic typefaces to choose from. Research labs like The American University in Cairo’s TYPE Lab are dedicated to changing that, by researching the deep history of the art, and making its visual knowledge available to scholars and designers across the Arab World. Typography and calligraphy can be found anywhere, from monuments to store fronts and street signs, and for hundreds of years, Egypt has been a rich landscape for the Arabic letter. “The Arabic letter started as hand lettering then the whole world advanced with the Guttenberg printing press. The Arab world was very late, though, because the Ottomans did not want to eradicate calligraphers’ jobs. At the time of Mohamed Ali Pasha was when there were finally printing presses like the The…
