My colleague Jan Kny and I are in Muscat, and we continue our work with Times of Oman, the English language daily, but also with its sister publication, Al-Shabiba, in Arabic. Of course, we work closely with the local team, and especially the art director, Nasser, who explains to us the special nuances of the language, and how every visual element has a meaning, and one simply cannot condense or enlarge—-or eliminate—-anything without first asking how the meaning of the word would be altered.
What do we do and how do we do it?
Gingerly is the adjective I would use to describe how we move. Tons of handholding from the editors and the art director and his team. We try things with color and architecture, but we leave the “typographic” components to the calligrapher working with us. Each letter is drawn by hand carefully. We test. We go back and look for something else. Suddenly, there is one logo we love, but the publisher walks in and tells us: Color is nice, but the style is “too childish” by Arabic standards.
Oooooops! Throw that away, “pretty” as it was, and start something else. In my mind, the questions: What made that logo chlldish? It look perfectly fine and anything but belonging in a children’s book? Well, too busy to ponder that one.
The next version of the logo arrives: well, too much emphasis on the dots over one of the characters. Oh, but that is NOT a character : it is three characters which together have a meaning.
I soon realize that Arabic letters need room to expand. Each character seems to dance into the page, and move across it. You do not enclose arabic logos into boxes. You give them plenty of space around them. Let all those swirls do the waltz around the room, then come back and do it again.
We try to learn the basics of the Arabic script, which will help us tremendously:
Notable Features
—The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Some additional letters are used in Arabic when writing placenames or foreign words containing sounds which do not occur in Standard Arabic, such as /p/ or /g/.
—Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left, numerals are written from left to right
—Most letters change form depending on whether they appear at the beginning, middle or end of a word, or on their own. (see below)
—Letters that can be joined are always joined in both hand-written and printed Arabic. The only exceptions to this rule are crossword puzzles and signs in which the script is written vertically.
For more information about the Arabic script:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/arabic.htm
We continue our work here this week: trial and error, many versions of the logo, a new color palette to reflect the colors of the region. We will update later in the week.
TheMarioBlog posting #201