Becca Hirsbrunner Spalinger

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Becca Hirsbrunner Spalinger American type designer who graduated from the MATD program at the University of Reading in 2015. Her graduation typeface was Etincelle, which was designed with long ascenders and descenders to better blend with the deep swashes of a specific style of Arabic used for Ajami languages in northern Nigeria and southern Niger. In addition to Arabic, Etincelle currently includes Greek, Cyrillic, and extended Latin characters. Etincelle Arabic Bold is the first attempt at a typeface design based on handwritten manuscripts from Nigeria, in a style of writing called Rubutun Kano by the speakers of the Hausa language. Becca is affiliated with SIL International, where she was involved in the following projects: Gentium. This famous free typeface supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode. Gentium Plus supports a wide range of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters. It was developed between 2003 and 2014 by J. Victor Gaultney (main designer), Annie Olsen, Iska Routamaa, and Becca Hirsbrunner. CTAN download link. In 2011-2012, George Nuss designed the Arabic typeface Fouta for the Guinean community. This was at the basis of the free font Harmattan (2015, Becca Hirsbrunner and Iska Routamaa at SIL International; Google Font link). SIL explains: Harmattan, named after the trade winds that blow during the winter in West Africa, is designed in a Warsh style to suit the needs of languages using the Arabic script in West Africa. The font does not cover the full Unicode Arabic repertoire. It only supports characters known to be used by languages in West Africa. This font provides a simplified rendering of Arabic script, using basic connecting glyphs but not including a wide variety of additional ligatures or contextual alternates (only the required lam-alef ligatures.) This simplified style is often preferred for clarity, especially in non-Arabic languages, but may be considered unattractive in more traditional and literate communities. Alkalami (2015-2017, SIL): Alkalami is designed for Arabic-based writing systems in the Kano region of Nigeria and Niger. Alkalami is the local word for the Arabic "qalam", a type of sharpened stick used for writing on wooden boards in the Kano region of Nigeria and in Niger, and what gives the style its distinct appearance. The baseline stroke is very thick and solid. This style of writing African ajami has sometimes been called Sudani Kufi or Rubutun Kano.	EXTERNAL LINKS MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Typefaces and type design for Arabic ⦿ African fonts ⦿