jist

Here's a collective of random design/art stuff I found on the net

1. UNICEF's Fifty Designers' Current Favourite Typefaces:
   £3 - You get the book with the samples, the money goes to charity.
   
   
2. i catalyst:
   Collective of Contemporary Egyptian Visual Art, quite experimental and very eye-pleasing
   The group of artists involved include: Kareem Lotfy, George Azmy, Ahmad Hefnawy and more. Mohamad A. Fahmy of Ganzeer participated in their event "Breaking Boredom"
   
   
   
   
3. BOQ بوق:
   Yet another from Egypt, a blogozine titled "Boq"
   
   
   

FontStruct: Everybody's a Typographer?

I was a tad excited to see that there's an online software/interactive system that allows you to develop types without downloading some Trial version of a huge software onto your system. I personally don't know much about Typography, I admire it, and I think if I delve into it I'll be hugely interested yet I still didn't get to this point - still an illustration sucker.

The website FontShop, one of the leading Fonts/Typography networks out there created FontStruct - a website that allows you to build, share and download fonts created using "FontStructor"; Developed by Rob Meek.

So I went ahead, signed up to the site and started fiddling around until to my surprise I see that they support a number of different languages/letter sets. And ta-da! There lies "Arabic". I clicked on it and started looking at the set of letters they had, though it included characters which would never be used in Arabic scripts but still, I quite liked it! Though some characters didn't show up to me.

Here's my trial, but then to find out I've added a hamza to a hamza-less Alef! Forgiveness, I'm erasing the hamza!

(click to enlarge)

I think it's quite revolutionary to be honest, I'm clueless if such projects been created before (and if so, please inform me) but I really like the whole feel to FontStruct and I believe it's a good

platform for budding Typographers - and even those who just have general interest - to develop and get good exposure.

Go ahead, fiddle with it, and make it your daily meal of font creation :)

my favourite arabic fonts

I would like to share with you some of my favourite Arabic fonts. Some friends say my taste in fonts is a bit too classic, and I don't deny it. I really love those classic types, the ones where people think they're all the same until they see them next to each other and find the little variations in each. Ah, pootiful.

The one featured at the top is supplied to me by my super designer friend Diana, she used it in an artwork she did for me, which says "Omar doesn't Like you" in Arabic (عمر لا يحبكم), you can see it here:

The font used is Bader Al Gordabia-2, Designed by Libyan Bader Moftah El Jarow and Modified by Egyptian designer Mohammad Amer . Anyway, you can Download It (.zip file, right-click, save target as).

As for my classic fonts, here are them:

When I saw Advertising (Light, Medium and Extrabold) I instantly fell in love with it. Being basic, beautiful and a variation from the usual font used for Arabic text. The one shown above is the 'Light' weight - which is my favourite out of the three. Designed by Majid Al Otaibi. Right-click the image to download. Quote from Fairuz' song "Humoom Al Hobb"

This beautiful beautiful font is Al-Mohanad. It says it's 'cracked' by Al-Amri - I really wish to know who is the original designer of this masterpiece but I'll make a wild guess and expect it's created by Boutros . It's available in two weights; Light and Bold. I think it's absolutely excellent and beautifully classic. Especially the filled Ain (ع) and the way the Yaa' (ي) flips. It's the standard font you'd love to use for everything. Right-Click the image to save. Quote from Marcelle Khalife's "Rita".

Al-Sayf, or translated into "The Sword" but I guess it's named after a person as "Sayf" is a common male's name in Arabia. This font reminds me of text from vintage books for some reasons, I really like it. It sort of compact and quite basic. Also cracked by the so-called Al-Amri but I'd have to guess and say it's from Boutros as well. Right-click to save. Quote from Ziad Al Ahmadieh's "Ihki Lil Alam".

DecoType Professional Naskh is an amazing set of very traditional Arabic types obviously derived from the Naskh calligraphy. It's designed/created by Thomas Milo from Netherlands. The set might seem like fonts that as similar, but in fact each one has a different variation of several letters. Click on image to download.

And now done with the classic one, I also have variant favourite ones which you'll find below :D

I really really love this AGA Battouta font designed by MAK Alagha. "AGA" stands for Applied Graphic Arts. Available in two styles; Regular and Outline. I think the font is absolutely amazing, and it's excellent match with illustrations and graphics of comic/humorous theme. I also think it's the perfect type for Children's graphics and would definitely expect to see it on a children's book cover. I mean, the name by itself is fun! Click on image to download.

No, don't try to read it Arabically :P it's Farsi for "How are you cutie?" - you pronounce it "Chetori Shereen?". Hehe, yes I really love this Farsi-style font and I think Farsi calligraphy is one of the greatest. Surpsingly, this font is created by Microsoft Corporation. The font is called Farsi Simple and available in two style; Bold and Outline. Download by clicking on image above.

Last but not least, Hacen Egypt by the amazingly talented designer - Mohamad Hacen. I really love this font. He was very capable of capturing the inspiration well and apply it to this type - as to those who know well enough it is very reminiscent of the beautiful headings in the vintage (and probably current) Egyptian newspapers.

So that's it for my list, which took me ages to build up as I was on and off! Hope you'll like it and the selection of fonts would inspire you to create some stuff.

Captain Abu Raed's Website

Been working on it for quite a while, as far as I remember it was ever since 23rd of November. I was very delighted to be part of the huge Jordanian feature film and it's amazing team- as I designed the Official website of Captain Abu Raed :)

I'm really happy with the feedback I got so far, as the most important one concerned - Amin - gave me a really good feedback and I'm more than super duper happy with it. As I quote him "In the meantime, thanks to Omar Al-Zo'bi, we have a new official web site with a slick polished look. He did a beautiful job."

The website is still going under slight modifications and I do realise the images can be loaded quite slow at some connection speeds but in order to maintain the quality of the JPEG's, no way to compress them (i.e. uglify them). A Flash preloaded will be uploaded soon enough for you to view it better ;D

Anyway, I hope you guys like it as well! :)