More Middle Eastern graphic design

By happy coincidence I saw this post over at Creative Roots yesterday.

Image by Iranian designer Farshad Alekhamis.
Dig the graffiti font.

English-Arabic graphic design: Talib Type

A buddy of mine once told me he thought Arabic script looked like someone had taken a sharpie and held it against a wall while driving along side it on a motorcycle (this from a guy learning to speak and write Chinese...) -- interesting mental images aside, people do seem to be fascinated with Arabic scripts, the way the letters connect or stand alone, the beauty of their symmetry or the way they can be rendered into such emotive calligraphy.

There are lots of fonts available in Arabic now, but few that hybridize the Latin script with an Arabic or Persian aesthetic; now the guys behind Talib Type, however, have devoted their talents to designing three fonts in what they style an "intercultural type research project... exploring the effect of globalization on contemporary global graphic design."

I love the way they've kept the integrity of the form by joining letters together and maintaining what my Arabic professor (and a dabbling calligrapher) once explained to me was the "essential element of harmonious balance" in the script...

"The aim was to show an experimental possibility of merging two different visual styles by creating three Latin fonts with an Arabic 'look and feel'. It all started out when we transferred our headquarters to Cairo, Egypt for about one year.

"Throughout the project, we created three fonts based on three different Arabic styles which influenced or inspired us the most: Naskh [used for many publications and all kinds of media; one of the most known Arabic scripts in the world], Kufi [often used for architectural designs, decorations and inscriptions] and the modern Arabic linear fonts."

Q: How did you come up with the name of the font?
"Talib is Arabic for "seeker of knowledge, student". As a graphic designer you have to be open minded, constantly sucking in all impressions from your environment, constantly "seeking for knowledge", especially when working intercultural."

And they turned it all into a book about contemporary Arab and Persian graphic design: Arabesque. Sweet!

Watch a clip from the designers' sejour in Egypt and their thoughts on the project. (Click on "motion content.")

All images courtesy Talib Type.

Lalla Links: Subway dogs, Gypsy theater, men in tights, la ilsa bonita

A photo essay on Spanish torreros, some of the few men who can make lime green and fuscia capes look macho. (Via Creative Roots, images courtesy Jeff Martin.)

Loving this print of a sleepy Menorca fishing village by graphic artist Alice Stevenson (seen at Design*Sponge).

How about this fascinating recent article from the Financial Times on the street dogs of Moscow who've learned to take the subway to patrol their territories? (Image source)

Or a slightly older FT article on a gypsy theater troupe in Seville, composed entirely of illiterate gypsy women, that is marveling audiences from all levels of society (from the geriatric cashmere-sweater set to university students and fellow Rom), drawn to the gypsy encampment outside the city to watch the women perform. And it's not just any piece of theater they're performing either: with brio and an innate sense of they play's essence, these women are interpreting one of Gabriel Garcia Lorca's last plays. Best of all, the experience has empowered these women.
It tours Spain in February.

Review: The Grand Mosque of Paris

"Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune - or sorrow - lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous."- A tract read to immigrant Algerian workers in Paris, asking them to help shelter Jewish children.

With the title page depicting the green-tiled roof of the Grande Mosquee de Paris rising out of the hazy purpled skyline at the moment of Paris' magical heure bleue, this children's book heralds a singular location in the City of Light where small and great acts of kindness occurred amidst the dark deeds of WWII's Nazi-occupied France.

While this image may be enough to make a few Swissmen run for their verdant, cow-dotted hills, The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust (by Karen Ruelle & Deborah DeSaix) is a singular work of children's non-fiction that ought to be better known.

Both beautifully illustrated and well-researched, the story, drawn from first- and second-hand accounts, brings to light the many risks undertaken by Paris' Muslim community --predominantly from North Africa-- to protect the lives of Jews (particularly children, Resistance fighters and others from being taken by the Nazis.

Though text heavy, the writing is clear and vivid enough to be understood by middle-school and the accounts and details that are sometimes astonishing: how people were smuggled out of the mosque via Paris' subterranean tunnels, into empty wine caskets loaded on barges and then down the Seine to the relative safety to the south; how the mosque's administration, under the guidance of its rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, an Algerian-born diplomat and playwright, provided falsified Muslim identification papers for an estimated 100 Jews in order to save them from being whisked off to the concentration camps.

Ruelle tells of how the Kabyle Berber dialect of Algeria was used amongst occupation resisters to communicate messages and arrange smuggling operations to remove people from the city; or how the Nazis, suspicious that there might be Jews hidden in the mosque, would come "to visit;" while they respectfully took off their heavy military boots before entering, the mosque's rector would sound an alarm in another part of the mosque, providing an opportunity for the refugees to hide in the women's prayer room, where the Germans dared not enter.

The pages are full of many other stories and anecdotes of average people performing magnanimous acts, each accompanied by illustrations that give a true sense of the tension and unease of the era -- often within the settings of the beautifully rendered interiors or architectural details of the mosque.

The Grand Mosque of Paris is a moving tale for children (and adults -- I learned quite a lot!) of events in our shared human history that still affect our world today. It also adds another dimension to the tales of courage in the face of the Holocaust, one far less known and discussed, I believe, due to more recent political antagony. I hope this book becomes widely translated and read outside North America, for I feel the author and illustrator have not only done a marvelous job bringing this subject to life in a manner accessible to children, but have also made an important contribution to interfaith understanding and brought greater nuance to our accepted narratives of historical events.

For more information on this subject, visit:

The Mosque that Sheltered Jews

The Holocaust's Arab Heroes

A biography of Si Benghabrit [Fr] - with lots of photos