By Tarek Atrissi

Earlier this year we designed a custom Arabic font for the new BBC Arabic TV channel. A similar yet different project came our way afterwards at Tarek Atrissi Design: Designing a unique Farsi font for the new BBC Farsi TV channel, which will officially start broadcasting later this year.

Above: Preview of the Persian font designed for BBC Farsi, and a preview of its on-screen usage.

Despite dealing with a similar script; and with the same client, the recent Farsi type design project took a very different path from the previous Arabic type project. Certainly, we learned from the process of the Arabic font: Learned more on the process of work with BBC; on the testing and technical issues accompanying the project; and on the context in which the font will be used and the goals it wanted to achieve. We also learned from the simple experience of watching BBC Arabic today, and seeing the outcome of our work “in use” in the daily news reporting. All this of course affected our approach to this similar project, and made us work on it with a supportive experience. Most important, the brief given to us by the Persian Editorial team was very different from the brief of BBC Arabic, if not opposite. The unique font that was required to be developed for BBC Farsi needed to be “subtle”, not visually imposing or with a strong character and being hence “transparent” to the reader and not calling undue attention to it. It needed then to follow the traditional and commonly used Farsi Typefaces in Iran, for it not be a visible and strong change of type style for the average viewer. The typeface still needed to look modern however, despite being inspired from the traditional. It needed to be designed to address a better legibility, particularly on screen resolution, and to work smoothly with the on-screen layout and information design of the new channel, particularly with relatively short ascenders and descenders.

Above: Sketches and images from the process of the Farsi type design project

The result is a new low contrast typeface with a contemporary look and feel and with open counters; optimized for best usage on TV screen; A typeface supporting Arabic and Persian languages, and ideal for usage for good legibility and a subtle modern character. The font is not exclusive for BBC and hence will be take a life on its own, beyond its life on the Farsi News Screen. Details on licensing this typeface will follow shortly.

By Tarek Atrissi

I have been for the last six month advising and guiding masters students at the Gaming Design department of the Utrecht School of the Arts in Holland, supporting them both in their final year projects and their supportive narratives (thesis). “The Big friendly Giant”, a project by two of my students, David Smit and Joeri Lefevre, was an interesting project in research, goals, concept and process of development.

Sophie and the Big Friendly giant; the main two characters developed for the Children’s target group, age 7 to 9. By David Smit- Utrecht School of the Arts.

The Project aimed at creating a fictional franchise around the “Big Friendly Giant”, the children’s book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, first published in 1982. Franchising is becoming very common in the Gaming industry, almost every successful video game becomes a full franchise. The need to think of the possibilities of franchising, right from the beginning of the conceptual and design process, becomes a pressing issue should the large and varied target group of a future franchise is to be properly reached. The goal of the project (and the research behind it) was then to create a user centered visual franchise development model that on one hand emphasize more on user involvement (hence on validated design decisions); and that on the other hand set clear guidelines on how to define clear visual design principles that allow unlimited growth of the visual design into different medium while insuring always quality and coherence of products.

Preview from the products developed as part of the fictional Big Friendly Giant Franchise. Lunch Bags and Comic book based on defined Visual and illustration Style.

The project became then the case study for the franchising model created. The students decided to define two very different target groups to address while developing the project: Children of the age of 7 to 9 and adult gamers. They conducted then a comprehensive research on both target groups, with working sessions with children in primary schools, giving them as users the ability to express their views and ideas on the Big Friendly Giant story and taking their input as a main inspiration for facts leading to design decisions. Similar research was conducted on adult players, and eventually each of the students developed the visual guidelines for each of the target groups: Joerie defining a simplified expressive style for the children; and David defining a dark explicit style for the adult gamers. Eventually, both students exchanged the target groups and each created a set of products based on the visual identity guidelines defined by the other, in order to test as well the efficiency of their defined visual styles. A comic book, Lunch pack, and a Nintendo DS game were designed for the Children. For the adult gamers, a comic book, an energy drink, and a condom package were designed as part of the franchised products of the Big Friendly Giant.

Preview from the products developed as part of the fictional Big Friendly Giant Franchise. Lunch Bags and Comic book based on defined Visual and illustration Style.

Some previews are shown in this post of the end result of this project. Each year, I am asked by Print magazine to nominate three young designers for the magazine’s yearly prestigious “20 under 30″ competition, a selection of some of the most talented upcoming visual artists worldwide. I have given my votes for this year for Joeri Lefevre and David Smit, for their wonderful work on this project that effectively combined research, theory and practice in Visual Design for the gaming industry.

By Tarek Atrissi

Another Arabic Logo Adaptation assignment; and again in Holland, where the discussion of the influences of the Arab world as well of the Muslim world on the country, leads to many demands for adapting certain well known Dutch brands into Arabic. Volkskrant Magazine, the weekly publication that accompanies the Daily Volkskrant Newspaper, published a special issue dedicated to the positive influences that islam has brought into the social and cultural life in the Netherlands. The Arabic lettering created then aimed to imitate the structure and rhythm of the very familiar Volkskrant Logo, resulting in a distinctive Arabic lettering style used for the logo adaptation, and for the magazine’s special masthead for this issue.

Preview of the Arabic Lettering adaptation for the logo / masthead of the dutch Volkskrant magazine (issue 423- 100% Politiek correcte moslim-special)