review – 10 comments
A typographic matchmaking project for the 16th century: the Civilité of Granjon and the Naskh of Winsoft.
Winsoft is a French company that produces all the specific Arabic ME (Middle East) versions of the Adobe software collection. For some reason Winsoft seems to believe that the Arabic typography never really departed from the Gutenberg era.
The latest software release of the ME Adobe Indesign has a number of new features for creating variations with their special Naskh font. Effectively mimicking calligraphic splendor of centuries ago. Why on earth does Winsoft (or Adobe) believe that Arabic graphic designers are waiting for text that can exclusively be used in calligraphic manuscript size ? The Naskh typeface that can do magnificent tricks is totally useless for contemporary graphic design needs, such as for newspapers, brochures, branding, or the internet. It is only applicable for very rare occasions where an ancient atmosphere is required or desired.
Why is the idea so persistent in the minds of the people working at Winsoft that the aesthetics from the times of '1001 nights' is typically Arabic. This is a bizarre way of looking at contemporary Arabic culture and assessing its needs. Winsoft even went as far as to invest in a special plugin for Adobe ME InDesign called Tasmeem. This software attempts to reproduce Arabic calligraphy to perfection using a computer keyboard. Originally this plugin was offered for 50.000 US dollars but this price was taken off their website. Apparently Winsoft is now working to make different types of this Arabic DTP Ferrari available, sales prices are still under study.
In Latin typography there is also a small niche that occupies itself with digitising the typographic glories of the past. But this is more like a nostalgic hobby. Not to be taken too seriously. Because nobody would select these typefaces for everyday use. Also no one would ever consider making complicated 'calligraphic engines' to automate Latin calligraphy.
Everything that is advertised as 'typical' for the Arabic calligraphy is less typical than it is often assumed. Using swashes, abundant ligatures and even 'kashidas' to prolong characters is all done in Latin calligraphy as well. Maybe Winsoft should consider to put the Civilité of Granjon as a matching Latin font for their specific Naskh typeface. Both will be capable of shaping in close harmony nice guirlandes of the past.
10 comments
Tasmeem
Hello Edo and Huda.
I do not know about Winsoft's various fonts, but recently I have heard about Tasmeem and made a point to find out what it is about. The inventor of the system Mr. Thomas Milo of Decotype www.decotype.com/ and your neighbor being in Amsterdam, explains the system in terms of reproducing the old naskh scripts. Your criticism that its is a "1001 Nights approach" to Arabic typography is understandable - in fact I have made a similar point in my earlier 1974 writing in Arabic (republished on my khtt page) that the aim of typography is not merely to imitate calligraphy. Having said that and hearing a video explanation by Mr. Milo about his system I now say- "why not?". More than that I see that Tasmeem is much more than just a method to imitate an ancient script, remarkable as that achievement is.
In its basic approach typography as we all practice it today is attaching glyphs domino-block style one next to the other, a system virtually unchanged since the days of Gutenberg. Indeed in your matchmaking efforts you sort of expect Arabic to fit this sort of geometrical regimentation, because it seemed to most people that this is what typography is all about.
The genius of Arabic handwritten script is the way it flows together in a harmonious whole. It is a dynamic organic way of attaching basic component shapes together not just along the horizontal stem but in various levels according to the curves of the letters. Mr. Milo's approach to creating Arabic is very sophisticated a revolutionary method applicable to any script in any language, new or old. He analyzed the basic geometrical curves that make up all the letters and allowed the computer to discover the best ways to link them together in the best way for any particular font it displays. It is a misunderstanding of Tasmeem that it is merely a system to mimic the old naskh - the system can be of great value for the automatic kerning of modern typefaces, even the development of completely new Arabic fonts undreamed of by the genii of the Arabian Nights!
In the interests of Arabic typography please consider inviting Mr. Milo to explain his ingenious system to the members of khtt and to Arab typographers in general.
I appreciate what you are doing but have only one wish for khtt that it becomes more of a give and take between the many amazing members. Perhaps the main page can stress what is new in the forums, like the Typophile site does. With warm best wishes.
Vladimir
Tasmeem
Dear Vladimir,
Thank you for your poetic reaction. You are certainly a romantic person.
To get things straight: the Khatt site is put on the web as a tool to meet and to exchange ideas. There is nobody excluded from any sort of contribution to the site. In contrast, all comments and contributions will be received with the warmest welcome.
However, the site is not meant to be a duplication of very specific discussions already going on in other sites. Anybody interested in the travails of Thomas Milo (or others) can choose from a plethora of possibilities to hear his voice or get acquainted with his products. It seems to me that you have a very romantic view on what Tasmeem is doing and not doing. In my view Tasmeem is very much like other proprietary software around and used for showing complicated versions of Arabic type. These types of software all use the same principle, there is very little that makes Tasmeem different. Obviously, there are a lot of different ways to use the ACE (Arabic Calligraphic Engine) in Tasmeem, but it is very confusing to me what DecoType or WinSoft really wish to achieve with their products. Now there appears to be a Tasmeem Tsunami Project, I guess this means that we may expect a deadly shower of new typefaces for Tasmeem anytime soon. If you find new applications of Tasmeem you feel are worth showing I'll be happy to put it on the site. But of course you can also do it yourself.
With the kindest regards,
Edo
Tasmeem
Dear Edo
Hello. I think this link explains better than I could the enthusiasm of young typographers about Tasmeem - it is a presentation made at Reading University.
www.typeoff.de/?p=282
I take the opportunity to congratulate you and Huda again about the Khtt website's beautiful design and interesting content. We may agree or disagree about various technical or other matters but having this forum to discuss them is important.
With thanks and warm regards
Vladimir
Nobody excluded, everybody welcome?
Edo,
you say "the Khatt site is put on the web as a tool to meet and to exchange ideas. There is nobody excluded from any sort of contribution to the site. In contrast, all comments and contributions will be received with the warmest welcome."
Is the "nobody is excluded, everybody is welcome" policy the same as the one applied by your wife during the organization of the Kitabat 2006 conference in Dubai, the very policy which led to the withdrawal of the support of Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) for the conference, to the withdrawal of some speakers and co–organizers? Is it perhaps the same policy that made your wife, who was part of the organizing committee, use her political influence at the American University of Dubai to insist that Thomas Milo be dropped from the speakers list at that conference even though he had been initially invited?
Contrary to what you've written above, what kind of pluralism of opinions can one expect from a website that, when leaving comments under an article, has two optional buttons: "I am a fan" and "Throw flowers". That is, of course, extremely impartial.
From Berlin,
Adam
To the matter
Edo,
Having voiced my opposition to the tone and the partiality of your contribution, I feel that I should add a few lines to comment on some of your assertions, which simply are not true.
It is absolutely right to say that type design should evolve in different directions. But you’re trying to create an impression that there is only one direction that is “right”. With Latin type, fortunately enough, your authoritarian approach never flew. The tradition of the Latin letter has been formed by the very play of “push-pull”, the back-and-forth interaction of hand and machine. On one hand, you’ve always had the perfectionism and organic nature of the inscriptional tradition, on the other hand, the advances in technology have created opportunities that offered another kind of perfectionism: the ability to reproduce the same shape cleanly and in absolute repetition. On the other hand, you’ve had the traditionalist conservatism of the calligraphic masters but you’ve also had technological restrictions and limitations that came with technology. In other words, both the hand and the machine had its strengths and its weaknesses.
The development of Latin type was never monodimensional, never monodirectional. It was always multidirectional and operated on several dimensions. Signpainters and poster artists worked alongside of printers, reproduction of the typographic letter by means of cut-and-paste or photography went hand-in-hand with hand lettering, and today, the computerized clean and repetitive sanserif letterforms are used at the same time as dirty, organic, photographically enriched lettering. In the digital age, it's bitmaps and vectors — which have the same parallel relationship as hand and machine “in the old days.”
When reading your words “In Latin typography there is also a small niche that occupies itself with digitising the typographic glories of the past. But this is more like a nostalgic hobby. Not to be taken too seriously. Because nobody would select these typefaces for everyday use,” it sounds like you’ve been living on a different planet. Have you never heard of Jan Tschichold, one of the 20th century’s greatest book and typeface designers, who started his career by publishing “Die neue Typographie”, a manifesto of Modernist typography, in which he condemned the use of all typefaces except minimalistic sanserifs, but later actually condemned his earlier views, adopted a strongly Classicist design style, and developed Sabon, a typeface which one can safely call “a digitisation of the typographic glories of the past,” namely of Claude Garamond’s roman and Granjon’s italic.
I throroughly recommend you a trip to the Frankfurt book fair (this autumn) or the smaller Leipzig book fair (which actually starts today). You may be astonished to discover that roughly three quarters of literature published in Germany is set in Sabon or in Stempel Garamond (yes, another Garamond). The Garamond letter is what the average German reader gets to see by default when opening a book.
There is certainly an abundance of other typefaces in use on the internet, in print advertising, flyers, brochures, newspapers and on mobile phones — but they never really caught on in book design. Well, perhaps with the exception of Robert Slimbach’s Minion, which seems to be the third favourite among German book designers, next to Sabon and Stempel Garamond. Minion is another design that draws heavily from the classic Renaissance Latin letter.
I hope that if Jan Tschichold’s name doesn’t ring a bell with you, at least Robert Slimbach’s name will. Apart from designing the hugely-popular Minion (which by the way pairs beautifully with DecoType Naskh, much better than your Civilité mockup), Robert has made “a digitisation of the typographic glories of the past,” namely of Garamond’s type. Actually, he’s done it twice. In 1989, he designed Adobe Garamond, a version that became hugely popular but which never satisfied him entirely, so a few years later, he began to work on a second, much more monumental, project, which he only completed in 2005. Needless to say that Robert based all the optical sizes of the Garamond Premier Pro family on the separate design size cuts taken from the original Garamond specimens, found among others at the Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp, which Robert visited when researching this project.
Did I mention that Garamond Premier Pro is also on its move to become a popular book typeface — joining Minion and the other Garamonds. But then, perhaps you simply consider reading books “a nostalgic hobby” as well.
Further, you say “Also no one would ever consider making complicated ‘calligraphic engines’ to automate Latin calligraphy.” I don’t know about you, but I like to do a little research before flooding the internet with the product of my brain. This usually saves both the writer and the reader some embarrassment.
Had you done some research, no doubt you would have encountered software applications such as Kalliculator [1] by Frederik Berlaen, a graduate of the TypeMedia type design program at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK) in The Hague, or DTL LetterModeller [2] [3] by DTL/URW++, created by Frank Blokland, one of the highest-regarded Dutch type designers and one of the teachers at that very academy.
Had you done some research, I’m sure you would have noticed that as much as 40% of the most popular retail Latin fonts sold by the large font distributors such as MyFonts [4] are calligraphic fonts, and for some font distributors such as Veer [5], it’s even 80%.
Had you done some research, you would have found out that among the winners of the Type Directors Club typeface design competition of the past few years, highly complex calligraphic fonts were highly regarded, such as Alejandro Paul’s Adios Script [6], his Burgues Script [7] or Ken Barber’s Studio Lettering script suite [7]. Had you ever looked at those fonts, you would know that their authors have gone through a lot of trouble of utilizing the contextual alternates mechanism of the OpenType font format to create, in essence, “complicated ‘calligraphic engines’ to automate Latin calligraphy”. In fact, other technologies such as the DecoType ACE font engine would have allowed them to achieve this even easier than the OpenType font format, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at some point we will see an even more sophisticated emulation of Latin calligraphy done outside of OpenType.
Since you have skipped the research, let me help you and assure you that — based on my ten years of experience in working for and with various font distributors, font foundries and type designers — there has been and continued to be a very strong interest in fonts that emulate Latin calligraphy, and that people are constantly trying to push the technological limitations in order to allow them more flexibility, more organic quality, more randomness etc.
This is not to say that it is the only direction. Of course, as I wrote at the beginning, the trend to clean up, minimize, idealize and polish exists as well — but it does so in parallel with, not in opposition to, the calligraphic direction.
No flower throwing this time either,
Adam
[1] Frederik Berlaen, Kalliculator: www.kalliculator.com/
[2] DTL LetterModeller download: www.fontmaster.nl/english/demo_rdrct.html
[3] DTL LetterModeller in use: www.flickr.com/photos/fabioaug/3147806901/
[4] MyFonts bestsellers: new.myfonts.com/bestsellers/
[5] Veer: www.veer.com/products/type/
[6] TDC2 2009 winners: tdc.org/tdc/tdc2-2009-winners
[7] TDC2 2008 winners: tdc.org/tdc_site/tdc2_2008_winners.html
Take a deep breath
Adam,
I read both your posts above. Besides Huda and Edo nobody seems to be interested in joining this particular forum. I myself fell silent at Edo`s patronizing response to my discussion of Tasmeem. What a pity...here there is this splendid website and forum khtt run by two energetic people with a great many young members from all over the world. khtt can and does play an important role in the multi-cultural world of typography where we can all air our ideas and discuss techniques and trends. I hope we can all put our prejudices (including my own) and differences behind us and try to cooporate to pool our various areas of expertise in such a way that the field of typography and specifically Arabic typography can go forward.
As Adam so ably demonstrates there are many directions that type designers have taken and can take. The Matchmaking project and Tasmeem are only two solutions - there are many more, and in either case we should be able to discuss their merits and criticize their shortcomings without feeling threatened. I still hope that khtt can open itself to frank and amicable discussions in an atmosphere of respect and courtesy. It may be true that anyone can post here but the forums are well `hidden` with no clear updated page of current topics prominently displayed on the first page of this website. It will be ideal if experts like Tom Milo, Nadine Chahine and Adam Twardoch and many others can benefit us from their expertise in this beautiful graphic garden created by Huda and Edo.
With best wishes,
Vladimir
Tasmeem "Tsunami"
Edo,
since you mentioned that there was a Tasmeem "Tsunami" project under way, I guess you were referring to this:
www.winsoft-international.com/en/store/fonts.html
As you can see, Tasmeem-compatible fonts represent a wide range of Arabic styles, not at all restricting themselves to just historical script revival. DecoType's own interest in type design certainly revolves around revival of historical Arabic scripts (Ruq'ah, Naskh, Nasta'liq etc.) and that to the extent and quality that is hardly found in any other digital products. But the other Tasmeem fonts prove how easily this technology can be applied to other styles.
Vladimir,
you seem to be right on one thing: the Typophile special interest group for Arabic Typography and Type Design seems to be a much more impartial place to discuss issues related to the topic: typophile.com/forum/366
Regards,
Adam
Typophile Special Interest Group for Arabic Typography and Type Design
Adam
A group of font designers started the Typophile 'Arabic' forum and one of the reasons, sadly, was that Khtt seemed to be concerned with one technical issue only - matchmaking. Khtt's strong point is that it emphasizes the aesthetic and branding sides of Arabic typography in modern culture, which is fine, of course, but even so there is almost no open discussion of these issue between members. Ideally both forums will be more open to the discussions presented in each other.
As one of the designers who adapted his font for use within the Tasmeem software I found it a stimulating experience which brings out many interesting issues. These need to be discussed by the community to help bring out the full potential of this amazing approach.
Vladimir
Adobe/Winsoft and Granjon
Quoting form an email from Dr Roper, he says:"I was amused by your piece juxtaposing Adobe/Winsoft and Granjon. The irony is, of course, that Granjon himself in the 16th century designed Arabic fonts which attempted to imitate naskh calligraphy, with umpteen ligatures, etc. They have been much admired for this, but nobody has used them, nor anything like them, for more than 200 years."
Coincidentally, today I myself received a press release from the organizers of the GITEX international computer fair in Dubai, promoting demos by WinSoft of their Tasmeem software. The press release states that the Tasmeem software will come in three different editions: Tasmeem Limited Edition (using customized Tasmeem fonts), Tasmeem Creative Edition (for advertising and print design applications) and Tasmeem Publisher Edition (which claims to be specifically tailored for 'Arabic literary and academic books'). I am very curious.