I’ve been interested in typography – the means through which language is made visible by the use of type. My interest surely started when I was a child and my father was responsible for the editing of a monthly magazine. There were always type specimen books around the house, each with hundreds of different type faces… the original face books, I guess.

My interest took on a more professional angle when I set type to earn a living while in college and then did my own magazine editing. In any event, I am pleased to discover a new typeface, Nassim, the first face for which Arabic and Latin alphabets were developed at the same time and selected as one of the best typefaces of 2011.

The faces, alas, are really for commercial use; licensing them is a costly proposition. To purchase licenses for both Arabic and Latin alphabets, in four weights, runs over US $700. They’re not really useful on the Internet, anyway, as at present they can only be embedded in Java script applications, which I avoid on this blog. Still, the face is very nice, I think.

Nassim
Reviewed by Thierry Blancpain

Nassim is a rarity in that its contemporary Arabic and Latin alphabets were developed synchronously. That multi-script process is what drives this idiosyncratic design at its core.

For a typeface designed for news, the variety in its shapes is at first sight astounding. But it makes all the more sense the longer you look at it. Early in his process, Titus Nemeth looked at the strong resemblance of the blackletter bastarda model to Arabic type. This search for a parallel between the Latin and the Arabic is a constant in the calligraphically inspired bi-script development of Nassim. The low stroke contrast, strong, asymmetric, and sturdy serifs, and a rather tall x-height informed the design of the Latin.
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