Event:

ATypi Lecture: Cascading Arabic

This is a talk about technically and aesthetically the most challenging Arabic type design projects: the slanted Arabic typefaces with cascading connections. It was exactly this challenge that brought DecoType into the typography scene in 1985 with the very first Ruqah computer typography. In 2011 a completely new Ruqah design takes its place. In addition to that, the award winning DecoType Nastaliq typeface in Persian style is very well received as the top typeface in WinSoft Tasmeem. A second nastaliq, this time in Pakistani style is under construction. All aspects of this work, such as the difference between Ruqah 1985 and Ruqah 2011, but also the minor and major Persian-Pakistani contrasts in the nastaliq style is the subject matter of this talk.

Cascading Arabic | Lecture by Mirjam Somers at ATypi 2011 - http://www.atypi.org/past-conferences/2011-reykjavik/programme/speaker?s=Mirjam%20Somers Sam Anvari

///MIRJAM SOMERS

Mirjam Somers is a typedesigner and a developer of font technology especially for Arabic script. She has been working for more than 29 years in this field.

After grammar school with a focus on science and mathematics, she first studied at St. Joost, Academy for Beaux Arts in Breda and continued at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where she graduated in 1974 with a focus on architecture. After having worked as an architect, carpenter and free-lance typographer, she produced in 1982, together with Thomas Milo, The Arabic Letterbox, a “Smart font avant la lettre”, a prototype of an educational tool for teaching the principles of correct connecting Arabic: the wooden letters were provided with connecting codes.
It was the starting point of a development of smart font technology for Arabic script for which, in 1985, she and her partners Peter Somers and Thomas Milo set up the company DecoType: Designers of computer-aided Typography.

>Read more: http://www.atypi.org/past-conferences/2011-reykjavik/programme/speaker?s=Mirjam%20Somers