الخط العربـــي الاصيل

 Arabic Calligraphy

Arabic Calligraphy’ is a hybrid English term. ‘Calligraphy’, taken from the Greek kallos (beauty) and graphe (writing), is literally understood in the western perception as ‘beautiful (hand) writing’ of the Arabic language. Yet the Arabic term for what we call calligraphy invites closer inspection. Within the Arabic language the transliterated word ‘Khatt’ (خط) is derived from ‘line’, ‘design’, and ‘construction’. The philological connotations get lost in the translated term ‘calligraphy’. From a type design perspective I think this rather an astonishing difference.

 

Western type is related to calligraphy, but not in the same way. The artistic practice of western calligraphy is nowadays clearly remote from the technical construction of digital type on screen. Still, calligraphy has come a long way, as has the development of type. In the beginning traditional type design took its cue from  the calligraphic writing techniques that punchcutters were imitating in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (see Fred Smeijers’ Counterpunch). Then, much later, came the counter-movement: a palette of non-calligraphic influenced typefaces that distanced themselves from the influence of the pen stroke; ultimately finding their expression in the Sans Serif types. And today we observe anew the calligraphic influences in Sans Serifs of the twentieth century (see Keith Tam on typeculture.com).