TPTQ Arabic Type Foundry

TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Oct 28 17:15:57 EDT 2024

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TPTQ Arabic Type Foundry [Kristyan Sarkis] Sarkis has a BA in Graphic Design from Notre Dame University, Lebanon, and a Master's from the Design in Type and Media program at the The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands. He has worked in the fields of graphic design and branding/advertising, and has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University (in Qatar). He was an independent graphic and type designer based in The Hague, The Netherlands, and is currently in Amsterdam. In 2015, he cofounded TPTQ Arabic Type Foundry. Flickr page. In a KHTT interview, he writes: My first real experience with type was when I was working with Mohtaraf Beirut Graphics (2007), one of the leading design houses in Lebanon. Mohtaraf has a strong affinity to Arabic type and has produced several beautiful Arabic typefaces. Back then, I was given a task to start drawing a typeface. I was hesitant at first, but got very quickly into it. The design director Yara Khoury noticed that I 'have a knack for this', and encouraged me to go on with it. I was delighted to have the opportunity to understand a lot more about type under Yara's direction, and with some eye-opening sketches from Ali Assi, to research the calligraphic styles and explore the beauty of the Arabic script. I had very limited technical knowledge in font development at the time, therefore after I did the original digital drawings on Adobe Illustrator, Greta Khoury, my colleague at the time, who was and remains one of my biggest sources of inspiration, took over the project, did her magic tricks with it, and produced it into a working font in Fontlab Studio. I owe my start in type design to Yara Khoury and Greta Khoury and to an endless fascination with the Arabic script and the ethereal art of Arabic calligraphy. This drove me to work on self-initiated typefaces which eventually culminated in pursuing a higher education in Type Design at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. There, it all went to a whole new level, with countless additional inspirations: from the great teachers that we had, to all the lecturers and the amazing amount of information that was given to us. His typefaces: Thuraya (2010) is his thesis project at KABK: Thuraya is a display Arabic typeface that explores a contemporary context for the Diwani script. It won an award at TDC2 2011. Still at KABK, he did a revival called Almost Didot (2010). Coco (2010) is a rounded serif text typeface under development. About Vespertine Arabic, he writes: Vespertine is a linear font designed specifically for the icelandic artist Björk by M/M Paris. Though seemingly a childish handwriting, the typeface is unusual, tricky and cursive with intricate curves. These characteristics, along with the thickness, x-height, counters and hand movement were meticulously studied and implemented in the Arabic version without undermining its legibility. He also created Always Arabic, an Arabic companion of the Latin house font Always used by the feminine hygiene product company by the same name. Amale is a modern Arabic display typeface suitable for newspaper headlines, book titles and logotypes. Designer of Colvert Arabic (2012, Typographies.fr). Louvre Abu Dhabi Logotype (2013). Greta Arabic (2011), which was designed for newspapers, won an award at TDC 2012 and again at TDC 2016. Kanun (2016-2017) by Krystian Sarkis is an Arabic signage type family carefully crafted to also handle long texts. It is the Arabic counterpart of Typotheque's November. Co-designer with Maha Aki of the Latin / Arabic typeface Kanun Stencil (2021), a playful typeface inspired by industrial signage and mechanical stencilling. Kanun Stencil is equipped with a collection of transportation and travel-related signs, symbols, icons, and various sets of arrows for signage and wayfinding systems. Kanun is meant as an Arabic counterpart of Peter Bilak's November. Teshrin (2017). A warmer version of Kanun, still well equipped for information signage and wayfinding projects. Qandus (2017-2019). A Latin / Arabic cooperative typeface by Kristyan Sarkis and Laura Meseguer. Speaker at ATypI 2016 in Warsaw on A Typographic Maghribi Trialogue. In this talk, he explains, together with Laura Meseguer and Juan Luis Blanco, the Typographic Matchmaking in the Maghrib project of the Khatt Foundation, which tries to facilitate a cultural trialogue as well as shed a typographic spotlight on the largely ignored region of the Maghreb in terms of writing and design traditions. The specific goal of the collaboration is the research and development of tri-script font families (for Latin, Arabic and Tifinagh) that can communicate harmoniously. Behance link. Personal home page.	EXTERNAL LINKS TPTQ Arabic Type Foundry Behance page MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Lebanon ⦿ Typefaces and type design for Arabic ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ Type design in Qatar ⦿ Dutch type design ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Map/Travel dingbats ⦿