What do design­ers need to know in order to work with both Latin and Arabic typo­graphy? Plenty.

For a myriad of reas­ons, the west­ern world has become aware of and, hope­fully, more sens­it­ive to the Arabic cul­ture. As a res­ult, graphic com­mu­nic­at­ors in the west­ern world are being asked to add insight into Arabic cul­ture and graphic com­mu­nic­a­tion to their cre­at­ive palette. This, how­ever, is clearly easier said than done. Cre­at­ing design that will per­form accept­ably in the Arabic com­munity takes a lot more than adding a new suite of fonts to your hard drive. It takes the real­iz­a­tion that the found­a­tion of Arabic graphic com­mu­nic­a­tion is very dif­fer­ent from that in the west­ern world.

The good news is that there is a book that goes a long way in help­ing the west­ern design com­munity learn about this issue. Extens­ively illus­trated with more than 200 examples of the best in con­tem­por­ary Arabic typo­graphy and graphic design, “Arabic for Design­ers” by Mourad Boutros is an author­it­at­ive guide for design­ers unfa­mil­iar with Arabic script.

Using visual examples and case stud­ies, Mourad Boutros takes the reader through the entire range of graphic design applic­a­tions – news­pa­per and tele­vi­sion news typefaces, book jacket designs, cor­por­ate and brand iden­tity, logo­type con­ver­sions, advert­ising, design for print and fine art.

The author shows how non-Arabic speak­ing design­ers can work with the lan­guage and under­stand and respect its cul­tural nuances, whilst avoid­ing the pit­falls and mis­takes to which many oth­ers have fallen victim.

Arabic for Design­ers demon­strates how design­ing with Arabic can yield incred­ibly innov­at­ive, beau­ti­ful and suc­cess­ful res­ults. Based upon over 40 years’ exper­i­ence of work­ing with an array of cor­por­ate and cre­at­ive cli­ents, Mourad Boutros addresses the rise in global aware­ness about Arab cul­ture in ways that inform and inspire.

This book is an invalu­able ref­er­ence for design stu­dents, design pro­fes­sion­als, mar­keters and any­one inter­ested in Arabic cul­ture and language.

Fonts for metal and early pho­to­type­set­ting machines like the Lino­type and Mono­type had to be cre­ated within a crude sys­tem of pre­de­ter­mined char­ac­ter width val­ues. Every let­ter had to fit within, and have its spa­cing determ­ined by, a grid of only 18 units. This meant that if the ideal pro­por­tions of a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter did not fit within a sub­set of these 18 units, it had to be altered so that it did. [End of Lead-in] As a res­ult, type design­ers were often com­pelled to com­prom­ise their designs from what they felt was ideal so they would work within the con­fines of the technology.

The ori­ginal Fru­ti­ger™ typeface was such a design. The face dates back to 1968, when Adrian Fru­ti­ger was com­mis­sioned to design the sig­nage for the then-new Charles de Gaulle Air­port in Roissy, France. Frutiger’s goal was to cre­ate a sans serif typeface with the ration­al­ity and clean lines of his Univers design, but softened with organic, almost cal­li­graphic, nuances.

The Fru­ti­ger sig­nage was com­pleted and installed at de Gaulle air­port in 1975. It took two more years to con­vert it into fonts for pho­to­type­set­ting. In the pro­cess, Fru­ti­ger was forced to make changes to many char­ac­ters to accom­mod­ate the spa­cing lim­it­a­tions of early pho­to­type­set­ting technology.

Neue Fru­ti­ger™, drawn as a col­lab­or­a­tion between Adrian Fru­ti­ger and Lino­type type dir­ector Akira Kobay­ashi, is based on the ori­ginal Fru­ti­ger typeface, but incor­por­ates many changes. The most obvi­ous is an increase in the family’s range of weights. Neue Fru­ti­ger has ten roman weights – each with an italic coun­ter­part. Other, more subtle, improve­ments were also made. Because the new design is not bound by the design restric­tions put on the first Fru­ti­ger, Neue Fru­ti­ger improves on the ori­ginal design in import­ant areas, such as char­ac­ter design and spa­cing. Kobay­ashi and Fru­ti­ger also con­cen­trated on enhan­cing char­ac­ter legib­il­ity at small sizes. Neue Fru­ti­ger enjoys all the design and spa­cing refine­ments that cur­rent digital tech­no­logy can provide.

There a hun­dreds of Web sites ded­ic­ated to improv­ing typo­graphic com­mu­nic­a­tion. Some are dir­ec­ted to graphic design­ers, some to stu­dents, some to Web design­ers, but today I ran across the first (to my know­ledge) typo­graphic guide ded­ic­ated to lawyers.

It took a graphic designer, turned type designer, turned law­yer to come up with the idea. Star­ted by Mat­thew But­t­er­ick a civil lit­ig­a­tion attor­ney in Los Angeles who, before he turned to the law as a pro­fes­sion, received a degree in art from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, focus­ing on graphic design and typo­graphy. After col­lege, he worked as type designer draw­ing four typeface fam­il­ies for the Font Bur­eau; and from here he went on to run web­site devel­op­ment studio.

While But­t­er­ick clearly has all the cre­den­tials needed to write about typo­graphy for law­yers, the site also provides simple, straight­for­ward guidelines to any­one who uses type and fonts in their pro­fes­sion. In addi­tion to answer­ing ques­tions like “What is typo­graphy and why is it import­ant?” But­t­er­ick breaks his advice into the three cat­egor­ies of “Basic,” “Inter­me­di­ate” and “Advanced” typo­graphy. Illus­tra­tions abound and there is an under­ly­ing sense of humor. Great stuff.

My only nit is Butterick’s advice regard­ing Times New Roman – but that’s prob­ably because of my asso­ci­ation with Monotype.

Go to the site (http://www.typographyforlawyers.com). Learn, enjoy and become a bet­ter typo­graphic communicator.