Tarek Atrissi on Al-Jazeera English Television documentary

Tarek Atrissi was part of the special documentary by Al-Jazeera English Television in “The Listening Post” show; the media critique show of the news channel. The documentary focused on typography and its role in journalism and how it affects the way audiences perceive the news. A selection of internationally acknowledged designers working in the field of design and typography for the news & media sectors were interviewed as well in the documentary, including Neville Brody, Mario Garcia, Nadine Chahine and Jose Scaglione.

The weekly feature of the show discussed the following: What is in a font? Typography, the way letters are dressed, the way words are designed may seem secondary to the meaning of the words they house. But form affects content. And in the news media, it affects the authority and the credibility of the stories being told. Helvetica conveys more neutrality than Lucida. Arial more sobriety than comic sans. Then there is the global angle to this story – designers of non-western fonts are up against the homogenising effects of a market dominated by Latin script. The Listening Post’s Marcela Pizarro examines in this special documentary how the choice of typography affects the way audiences perceive the news.

The office of Tarek Atrissi Design has for long been involved in designing for the news sector and providing multilingual typographic solutions for print and online media outlets. This included designing the branding, logo and custom Arabic typefaces for Al-Ghad newspaper in Jordan in 2004; the BBC Persian screen typeface; as well as Al-Jazeera Arabic font family developed for TV and online usage.

The Full show episode can be seen online is on the following link:
http://trib.al/WU7dE79
(Typography special features starts at 13:32)