While historians have made efforts to document the Arabic script from both historical and visual perspectives, few have made the information and resources on the Arabic script accessible to the general public. Bahia Shehab is an artist, activist and academic who has recently founded TYPE Lab at the American University in Cairo (AUC). TYPE Lab is dedicated to promoting the documentation and development of the Arabic script in both Arabic and English, as well as to encouraging conversation around its history and development. Here, she describes her team’s efforts to create a project that reproduces and documents over 70,000 historical and contemporary Arabic letters in the Visual Encyclopedia of Arabic Letters, a TYPE Lab project, and make them open access so that artists, designers, historians and academics can learn more about the letters’ aesthetic features as well as their chronological information. While the TYPE Lab website is underway, the Facebook and Instagram pages are regularly used to share Arabic letters as well as events that host various designers, historians, publishers, academics and other speakers who have experience with the Arabic script. As this project unfolds over the coming years, we look forward to how Shehab and her team will have developed this project and taken it further.
(Questions by Marwa Gadallah, with contributions by N.A. Mansour)
Your background is quite dynamic: you are an artist, activist, and academic. How is each of your skills felt in the TYPE Lab project?
I think it is a good place for me to use all of my skills. One ‘skill’ is developing a network. I have a very special kind of network because I know historians and academics and, at the same time, I know designers and type designers. So, I feel like my background naturally helps me connect these two worlds. I feel that there are many exciting conversations that need to take place and I feel like my position is that of a catalyst, just to spark the conversation, so that people can start talking to each other. Somebody who teaches Arabic at a school is probably unaware of the problems that we are facing, as designers, in the shape of the script because what they are concerned with is legibility. And, as a historian, what you look at is the development, evolution and context of the script itself. But the problems in Arabic are aesthetic and functional. We need a diverse skill set to be able to address these problems and the main role of TYPE Lab is to bring these worlds closer. We would like to create a space for designers, historians and the general public to have informed conversations about the evolution of Arabic letters and this exchange of ideas will spark change.
Can you briefly describe the inspiration and goals of TYPE Lab and its main project, the Visual Encyclopedia of Arabic Letters? What prompted you to develop them?
The idea for TYPE Lab has been there for some time now. There is a great need for a conversation about the development of the Arabic script and there are people working and doing beautiful work in different parts of the world, developing technologies and new scripts and researching the script’s history. However, there has not been a place in the Arab world that brings all of these people from different backgrounds to have a conversation, a total conversation about the script per ce. The aim of TYPE Lab is to bring academics, type designers, researchers, educators and anyone concerned with the development and evolution of the Arabic script together to talk and discuss its future and solutions.
Isolated Lam-Alif (left: digital reproduction, right: photo of part of original artifact);Animated Thuluth on Bowl, Bronze Inlaid with Silver, Iraq? , 7th century H / 13th century CE.
The Visual Encyclopedia was inspired by my book A Thousand Times No and after looking at the beautiful history of the Arabic script and studying it for years, I felt my advantage: I know the history. As a designer, [the history] made my practice much richer and I thought that if I could make this visual data accessible to designers around the world who want to improve the Arabic script, then I was sure this would push their experimentation in more interesting and exciting directions. You cannot develop the future if you do not know your history. For me, the Encyclopedia connects the chain between the new designers who are not aware of their rich visual history. They might only know the basic aqlam al-sitta [six pens], without a full awareness of the richness, diversity and history of the Arabic calligraphy. Because the resources are scarce, because they are dispersed, because of the loss of archives due to colonization and later uninformed governance in many Arab countries, I thought that providing a resource without all of the historical digging would make it easier for designers to grasp and simply see a letter and where it came from, with a small history of the letter. There are hundreds of designs for each letter, such as the letters ha’ (“ه ”) or ba’ (“ب”). If you are a designer and you are seeking to make a new script or a new font, having this sort of data is very valuable.
In a bit of detail, what is the process of documenting the Arabic letters from research to digitization? Who else is involved in the process? Do you hope to collaborate with other research centers in the future?
Yes, this is just the beginning for us; this is just a nucleus. We started last year, late 2019. The main aim is to put the Encyclopedia online; this is what we have been working hard on, so that we can have a free open-source database that we can keep building on. It is a very long-term project. I started it with personal funding in 2013 not realizing what a huge endeavor this was. It needs designers who can trace the letters [from reproductions of original manuscripts or artifacts], historians who can verify the sources of the letters and translators to ensure that we are translating the terms properly, systematically and scientifically. It also involves web developers and, now, as we transition online, we also have a social media manager. As such, it is a team-effort and this is why my process has been very slow. Sometimes we run out of funding and then we get funding but then the team that was hired is already working on another project so we need to find a new team. So, it has been on and off for quite a while. But, now, with the Centennial Fund from the AUC, we were able to finally set up the lab and bring a good team together. I am really lucky to have the support of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with their historian Mohamed Hassan who is our main advising historian in addition to myself. On the project, we have had a beautiful team of designers coming in and out, with the design lead being Sarah Shebl for quite some time now. We also have the AUC IT team and a private web developer who is developing our website for it to be launched. It takes more time just to make sure that the team is communicating properly and that we have the right work tools. In the future, we are hoping to collaborate with more research centers, academics and, hopefully, volunteers who would be willing to support our work and make this knowledge accessible to more people.
What is the chronology of TYPE Lab? What criteria do you use to choose which letters to document?
We have had long discussions as a team about this. We started with what we could find available, making sure that there is no redundancy, especially in the later period when there are a lot of letters that really look the same so there is not much addition. There are several criteria. The first is the origin of that which we are documenting, whether it is a historical document, a building, a mushaf [codex containing the Qur’an] or a mishkah [lantern], etc. Whatever the medium is, we have to verify the historical data first and make sure it comes from a reliable resource. This is one criterion for our historical materials. The second is value, not as in how much it costs, but in its historical value; whether, for example, it is a sword that was used in an important battle or a very special mushaf or manuscript from a special calligrapher. There are other more aesthetic criteria that we use but these are mainly it.
For the more contemporary works, we rely on donations. We include the work of any designer who is willing to donate their work and we think that their contribution is of value to the Encyclopedia. We are trying to document the work of the calligraphers who worked right before the digitization process with the help of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina so that we have at least one sample of their work. That way, people can know who these calligraphers are so that their memories and the memories of their work may be preserved. An advantage is that our Encyclopedia is bilingual [in Arabic and in English]. Some resources on Arabic calligraphers may already be available in Arabic but scholars in the West do not know who these calligraphers are so we are trying to create more awareness about the talent associated with the Arabic script and those who work with the Arabic script in the Arab world and in other parts of the world. We also feature designers of the Arabic script who are not very well-known. I think it is important to not just introduce our audiences, which include young designers, to the history of the script but also to the people who created this history.
What particular resources have proved useful in your research process?
The first one is actually Bernard O’Kane’s project The Monumental Inscriptions of Historic Cairo. This has been a great resource. The second one is all the museum archives that are available online. The third resource is books, which we skim through and source material from. We also get donations of work from designers.
You mention that you would like to create a dialogue to address the issues associated with Arabic type. Can you discuss how you plan to do this?
We have several strategies. The first is to create dialogue spaces, like symposiums and roundtables. We had three roundtable discussions planned for April, May and June. Unfortunately, in the current situation, these have all been cancelled physically. We have transitioned online and we are beginning with an online series in the month of June [2020]. Each of these talks revolves around a concept related to the Arabic script because everyone is either concerned about the design, the shape, the coding or the technical aspect of the typography. We really need to have a broader conversation with a bigger audience because the script is involved in our everyday life and it is an integral part of our identity. This is the main idea that we would like to drive through these conversations with designers, historians, scholars, academics and other people who work with the Arabic script in different ways. Ideally, we will have monthly conversations around a certain theme and, hopefully, these will be documented on our social media platforms.
Final Fa’ : Plate, Nishapur or Samarkand, Glazed Pottery , Iran or Uzbekistan, 3rd – 4th century H / 10th – 11th century CE .
Also, social media is a great place to have wonderful conversations with our followers. We have a good Instagram page. We have just set up a Facebook page so that we can have audiences from different backgrounds. In the future, once our website is launched, we hope to reach out to more research centers and educational institutions who are like-minded and who have the same concerns. We are also looking forward to creating events in collaboration with these institutions so that more awareness is created around the solutions needed for the development of the Arabic script.
…script is a visual manifestation of identity..
Bahia Shehab
We seek to broaden the horizons of the people who follow us, mainly designers, who we can show different angles on the problem [of the development of the Arabic script] because sometimes, as a designer, you are so focused on the shape of the script that you forget the bigger picture and I really want to bring the bigger picture to their minds. I want to show them that the script is a visual manifestation of identity and that the problem [with the development of the Arabic script] is multifaceted. It involves maintaining and developing the aesthetics of the script in addition to the technicalities of transmitting and adapting it to new technologies while keeping it legible and accessible.
How do you expect artists and designers to make use of the content that TYPE Lab has to offer on a practical level? What other types of users can you see using TYPE Lab?
Medial Kaf: Quran Folio Or. 1099, Ink on Paper, Egypt
Early 9th century H / 5th century CE (The British Library, London).
I hope that the Encyclopedia can be used in classrooms so that school students can look at different shapes of letters. I hope that I can engage with Arabic teachers so that they can create exercises around these different letterforms and come up with concepts where they can engage with their students, help them learn about the Arabic script in a playful and engaging way and maybe ask them to trace back the origins of letters and try to find more information about the artifacts [from which the letters were reproduced]. We are providing all of the metadata; we are providing the resources and all of the history that we can and a small picture. Maybe, in the future, teachers can engage with their students and help them learn about the history of the Arabic script through this tool. I am hoping that the Encyclopedia will be an educational tool for students, designers and anyone who is interested in learning about the Arabic script and sharing the beauty of the language and the letters themselves.
How does TYPE Lab tie into your many other projects?
This is a difficult one! I am always juggling many balls! All of my projects feed each other. For me, they are all relevant because the research on the script and the jewels I find within it are feeding into my visual data bank. It helps me create better designs as an artist and it helps me understand my script, my identity, my history and my practice better. It also helps me have conversations with colleagues who are doing interesting work around things that I love.
Follow us this month (June 2020). I am really excited about the theme. Here is a scoop for you: we are discussing the Arabic script and children’s literature. We are hosting Walid Taher, a brilliant award-winning children’s book designer who has done some amazing experiments. We have Mohamed Hassan, a historian from the Writing and Script Center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina who will take us through some children’s literature from the 1940s and 1950s and show us how calligraphers have attempted to solve the problem of the Arabic script and how they represented it visually during that period in time. We have Nadine Chahine, a type designer, and Yasmine Motawy, an academic specialized in children’s literature, who will be in conversation with each other about legibility for children. We also have a radical publisher, Nadine Touma, from Dar Onboz in Beirut, coming on board. She will discuss how she commissioned different designers and had them experiment with the shapes of the letters for children. We have more interesting themes in the coming months and I am really excited to be sharing them with everyone. To me, the most exciting aspect is the people who will be discussing these new ideas, and how curating these talks itself will get an idea across. I am hoping that by hosting speakers with their own visual content, the viewer will get the main message. That is that the shape of the Arabic letter is part of our identity, historically, currently and in the future. Children were taught Arabic calligraphy at school. I do not understand why we have stopped doing that. It is essential. I am an Arabic script Type-ivist: let us bring together all of the activism and my concerns on Arab identity and its visual manifestation.
Bahia Shehab is professor and founder of the Graphic Design program at the American University in Cairo. An artist, designer, and art historian, her work has received a number of international awards, including a TED Senior Fellowship, a Prince Claus Award, and the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. Her publications include A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Ali (2010), At the Corner of a Dream: A Journey of Resistance and Revolution (2019) and a co-authored book, with Haytham Nawar, A History of Arab Graphic Design (2020).