Arabic for Designers

Article

NOTE: A few pages from this book have been photographed and are available in the gallery here.

Arabic for Designers is a decent entry–level book for any designer wanting to enter the Arabic market. It provides some fantastic design ideas and gives a surface–level perspective of both the history of the Arabic language, and also it’s current implementation in the digital age. However, the book left me with the impression that there must be something better available for the cutting edge designer.

While it can be argued that a basic introduction to Arabic and it’s history is relevant to the topic of Arabic design, I believe it should have been left out of the book. If someone is seriously considering the option of using Arabic in their design work, they will either:

1. Already understand Arabic (as in a native speaker) or
2. Invest heavily in learning the language (as I am doing now)

As some of the examples in the book demonstrate, there are some daft designers out there that are trying to work with Arabic with disastrous results. But we don’t necessarily need plenty of remedial reading to warn the few folks out there that need the warning. I would assume most folks wanting to design in Arabic will do their homework. Besides, a book this size simply cannot suddenly transform a clueless non–Arabic designer into a good one. There’s no way around it. You must understand both Arabic and the culture.

However, to be fair the book has some awesome design examples that definitely make the book worth buying. The “Spinneys” piece, in particular, was quite intriguing to me. It also covers some important developments in Arabic design such as the influence of Letraset and the attempts of designers to create a “Basic Arabic.”

As mentioned, there are very good examples of fantastic design in the book. Unfortunately it has a number of poorly selected designs as well. Not only that, the book itself is lacking in a solid layout. Body copy is placed dangerously close to containing strokes giving the reader claustrophobic visual fatigue as they read. All of the pages in the book have a tawdry, colored background that distracts from the designs on display. It just doesn’t FEEL like a design book. Yet, when one takes off the dust jacket, one finds a gorgeous hardcover with beautiful Arabic script in gold foil! It’s a shame that this sensitivity to elegance is not carried out in the rest of the book.

Now let me make this absolutely clear…Boutros knows his stuff, and his calligraphy ability is astounding. I would be honored to meet him one day! If anything, I’m suggesting that the designers responsible for designing the book could have used more care. Yet, regarding content, there are still some selected pieces of artwork in the book that don’t belong. Even I have found better examples just walking around snapping pictures.

What’s with the photo?

I have to explain the funky book in the photo above. Thanks to the Yemeni postal service, the book was shredded when it arrived straight from Amazon! Fortunately, my Mom, who was kind enough to send the book to me as a gift, contacted Amazon and they sent out a replacement. It just seems a shame to me that they should have to send a replacement when the problem certainly appeared to occur in Yemen. But now that I have the new book, I sorta want to keep the old one! That ridiculous ground–up tear just makes me laugh. So…

Does anybody want to buy the new one? I can either ship it to you from Yemen or I can send it the next time I visit America. Just let me know.

And finally, I want to say a big THANK YOU to my Mom for sending me something that will surely help me in the work that I love to do.