Tanseek

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Tanseek

“We believe Tanseek is the first ‘system’ of its kind designed purposely to combine ‘serif’ and ‘sans serif’ faces to achieve a balanced, visual relationship between the Latin and Arabic alphabets,” said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Monotype Imaging. “The design answers a perennial challenge for graphic communicators: how to succeed typographically when using both Arabic and Latin fonts. The root of the problem lies in the extreme differences between the two alphabets, and the fact that Arabic and Latin fonts have not been traditionally designed to work together – nor have they ever really been expected to. Tanseek means ‘harmony’ in Arabic, which is exactly what the typeface designers set out to achieve.”

“Tanseek brings harmony between Arabic and Latin-based texts – English, French and Spanish, for example – across serif and san serif styles and a variety of weights to provide a typographic palette for graphic designers,” said Mourad Boutros, head of the London-based Boutros International, a typeface design firm also specializing in Arabic calligraphy and design. He and his wife, Arlette, created the Arabic Tanseek fonts. “We paid careful attention to ensure consistency within various typographic aspects, from line weights and curves to the distance between the baseline of characters and their meanline, or x-height. We wanted to make sure any two Tanseekfonts would work well together, no matter how they were used or in what combination.” 

“Tanseek was designed with a calculated eye toward balancing character shape, stroke, width and text color between the two alphabets,” said Dave Farey, who heads HouseStyle Graphics in London. He and his typeface design partner, Richard Dawson, created the Latin portion of the Tanseek typeface. “While the Arabic design provides calligraphic elegance, the Latin counterparts lend aesthetic compatibility and exceptional legibility.” The Tanseek Pro Complete Family Pack combines an Arabic traditional design with a Latin-based serif counterpart in the OpenType® Pro font format in regular, light, bold and extra bold weights. The family pack

also contains an Arabic modern design paired with a Latin-based sans serif design available in the same font format and weights. Individual combinations may be licensed separately. Tanseek fonts are being used in various industries and world markets, including television channels in Saudi Arabia, university communications in the U.S. and Qatar and a retail clothing outlet in Sweden. The design is also being employed as a corporate typeface for a luxury resort in the Kingdom of Bahrain and as part of a logo for a property developer in Dubai. “While Tanseek combines superior Arabic and Latin type into a single solution, it’s really much more than that,” said Haley. “It’s a typographic system for serving the needs of a multicultural environment, which sounds a lot like our world in the 21st century.

View Tanseek Samples (PDF)

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