TPTQ Arabic

Shekanj, a contemporary dialogue with Nastaʿlīq

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At the heart of Shekanj lies a fundamental question: can Nastaʿlīq letterforms be positioned along a horizontal baseline—khatt-e korsī—and still function as a viable typographic system, both in form and in overall texture? Exploring this question became the driving force behind the design, guiding decisions at every stage of development.

The scarcity of Nastaʿlīq typefaces in the history of Arabic-script type design is not accidental. It stems from two closely related challenges. First, Nastaʿlīq’s highly variable letter combinations resist simplification and systematization, demanding a deep understanding of letter behavior and contextual relationships. Second, existing font technologies have historically struggled to render these complex interactions efficiently and faithfully, reinforcing the script’s resistance to typographic standardization.

Nastaʿlīq holds a central position in the eastern regions of the Arabic-script world, particularly among Persian- and Urdu-speaking communities, where it functions as the dominant writing model. At the same time, it has long been embraced in the western Arabic-script context—especially in the Arab world—for headings and vernacular use. Despite this wide cultural presence, contemporary typographic interpretations of Nastaʿlīq remain limited.

Shekanj seeks to respond to this gap. Its aim is to offer a contemporary, typographic interpretation of Nastaʿlīq, one that respects its calligraphic heritage while allowing it to take on new roles within today’s Arabic-script typography. Rather than attempting to replicate manuscript traditions, Shekanj translates their underlying principles into a system suited to modern typesetting.

Expressive by nature, Shekanj preserves clear calligraphic references in its forms, while carefully moderating them to maintain coherence across text blocks. This balance allows the typeface to remain visually rich without sacrificing readability. It is particularly well suited for titles and short texts, where its handwritten character creates a strong emotional and sensory connection with the reader, making Shekanj an ideal choice for expressive writing, literary content, and contemporary poetry; contexts in which nuance, rhythm, and atmosphere are as important as legibility.

Shekanj was designed by Amir Mahdi Moslehi under the supervision of Kristyan Sarkis between 2021 and 2025. Font engineering was carried out by Amin Abedi.

Specimen design: Studio Melli

Ping Round, an unapologetically warm but constructed typeface

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 2020, we published Ping Arabic, the counterpart of our sister foundry Typotheque's Ping, dubbed a 'whole-world typeface' for its support of a large number of writing systems including Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese. The complete project went on to win a Gold European Design award and Ping Arabic easily became one of our most popular fonts.

We introduced Ping Arabic as typeface with constructed and organic influences due to its simplified and fairly geometric forms infused with the influence of the hand and writing.
Ping Round Arabic takes the organic elements (i.e. continuous strokes, friendly and comfortable proportions, compact forms) a step further by rounding all the stroke terminals. This makes Ping Round even warmer, more approachable and suitable for a wide range of applications from signage to children's books.

Ping Round Arabic was designed by Kristyan Sarkis. Oscar Guerrero assisted with the production of the fonts and Liang Hai engineered the final fonts. The Latin counterpart was designed by Peter Bilak assisted by Nikola Djurek.

Specimen Design: Shiva Nallaperumal

Roshan, a typeface inspired by Sufism

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the deliberate intention of maintaining coherence between its Arabic and Latin counterpart without overly homogenizing them, Roshan is a high contrast multiscript typeface with close connections to calligraphic traditions. While the Arabic is inspired by the rounded forms of Persian Naskh and Maghrebi writing styles, its Latin is incised, in contrast with the more common practice of pairing a serif typeface counterpart to a high contrast Arabic. This makes the two scripts even more distinct in a multiscript context.

Roshan is Persian for bright as well as enlightenment. In its name lies the description of one of its main characteristics. To let in more light into the counterforms, Roshan introduces subtle stencilling rather than enlarging the white of the letterforms. On the other hand, for the wide shapes of Arabic that do let it a lot of light, the terminuses were tapered to make the black and white balance on the reading line more consistent.

With its rounded, flowing forms and bright, open counters, Roshan is reminiscent of the dance of the whirling dervishes—a spiritual practice deeply tied to Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam that emphasizes an inward, personal connection to the divine, and that had a considerable impact on the Islamic world particularly in poetry literature and calligraphy.

Roshan comes in six weights ranging from Extralight to Bold. While it is intended for display use, it is also suitable for short blocks of text. Roshan boasts a large number of ligatures and alternate forms for a smoother reading experience and more authentic representation of the writing systems, especially the Arabic counterpart.

Roshan was designed by Sina Fakour between 2021 and 2024.

Specimen design: Sina Fakour

'The Way I See It', an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Kristyan was given the full freedom to showcase his lettering work in whichever form represented it most authentically and, for that, the canvas offered by the museum was composed of seven arches of 3.3 x 5.3 meters and two walls of 9.75 x 5.75 meters.

Together with Thomas Castro, the design curator at the museum, Kristyan decided to completely fill the space with his most intricate lettering work to date, creating two 'hallways' of letters. Emphasised by the shape of the arches, the idea was to evoke the feeling of flipping through the pages of an oversized heavily ornamented Arabic manuscript. The visitors are invited to walk through the artwork completely surrounding them from both sides.

After a few months of preparation, 'The Way I See It,...' opened to the public on the 6th of April 2023 and was supposed to be on display until November of the same year. However the museum decided to extend the deadline twice and the exhibition ended up being on display for a little over a year and closed on April 15 2024.

For a more immersive experience, one side of the exhibition was in black and white, while the other was in full colour. All the works shared a common thread: their intricate, meditative dimension and the diverse exploration of writing styles that influenced or inspired them. Each piece draws inspiration from a distinct writing style.

It was truly heartwarming to see visitors of all ages and nationalities—both native and non-native speakers of Arabic script—interact with the artworks, take photos of and with them, and share their experiences with us. Among the most important visitors was, of course, Kristyan's mother. Below is a small collection of these interactions.

An immense thank you to Thomas Castro for the invitation, generous support and total freedom.

Photos by: Peter Tijhuis

A custom typeface for the Louvre Abu Dhabi Part 2.

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It is not often that you get the opportunity to design two typefaces for the same institution within a ten-year timeframe. Back in 2013, before the inception of TPTQ Arabic, our founding partner Kristyan Sarkis was asked to create a custom Arabic typeface for the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum. Kristyan worked with Philippe Apeloig, Hala Wardé, Jean Nouvel and their teams to develop an innovative, high contrast typeface that complemented the distinct architecture and identity of the museum. It included an uncommon feature at the time: the organic extension of the letter connections (or in Arabic Madd).

The LAD Arabic typeface designed in 2013 applied in the museum's signage showcasing the organic Madda feature.

Seven years later, when the museum decided to update their visual identity, there was a need for a new typeface, this time in Arabic and Latin. It was a full circle moment for us to be asked to develop the new typeface.

Video courtesy of Louvre Abu Dhabi

Working with Wiedemann Lampe and the LAD design & marketing team this time around, the project started with defining the relationship between the old and the new typeface as well as the one between the Arabic and Latin script.

Different pairings of construction and contrast

Multiple questions arose:

- Will the new typeface replace the previous one?
- What kind of pairing effect are we considering? What combination of Serif/Sans (Latin) and High Contrast/Low Contrast (Arabic) better represents the vision of the museum?
- Will the new Arabic typeface be a redesign of the previous one or will it be a completely new design?

Due to the success of the first typeface and the parameters of the new identity, it was ultimately decided that the new typeface would be an altogether new design for Arabic and a constructed grotesque Sans serif for Latin with the aim to complement the previous one rather than replace it.

And so, we set out to design a new typeface in Arabic and Latin in three upright cuts Display, Text Regular and Text Bold, and two italic text cuts for Latin.

While the new Arabic is seemingly completely unrelated to the previous ones, it does take some of its cues from the latter; most importantly they share similar letter widths, overall stroke width and curvature in the connections. The new typeface is also built on the same fluid structure as the previous one, however with larger, more rounded and geometric counterforms, it decidedly departs into a more constructed and less humanistic realm, in line with the new identity and its Latin counterpart.

The Latin design is a classic highly functional grotesque Sans serif. The text cuts feature a large x-height, which improve the legibility in small sizes. It is also wider, and more loosely spaced, Generously proportioned, darker, wider, typical features of typefaces intended for small sizes to improve legibility. On the other hand, the Display cut, designed for short texts and headlines, is lighter, crisper, more compact and detailed, featuring strong incisions on the stroke connections reminiscent of the influence of the calligraphic pen.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi typeface was designed by Kristyan Sarkis (Arabic) and Peter Bilak (Latin). Maha Akl assisted in the production of the Arabic counterpart. The fonts are now alive and well, and being used across all marketing and communication platforms of the museum.

Images 1–5 courtesy of Wiedemann Lampe