Typographic Matchmaking in the City
For the Khatt Foundation in Amsterdam, we developed the editorial concept and the graphic design of the report of the “Typographic Matchmaking in the City” project that brought five teams of type designers and architects/urban planner together between 2008 and 2010. These teams created proposals for multi-lingual, multi-script typographic installations in public space.
This 396-page-book combines these reports together with ten further essays, and boasts close to 1,000 illustrations, most of which document the teams’ processes. All text is available in three languages: English, Dutch and Arabic. Since Arabic script reads from right to left, we decided to start the book from both sides, and as an instrument of “crossing borders”, like the whole project is, we decided to reference part of the image material to the “other” half of the book.
The teams’ sections in the middle of the book are delimited with coloured paper – books within the book – and function in the same way: they start from both sides with essays and documentary pictures, and the languages meet in the middle of each section to show the final project proposals.
396 pp, 28×21 cm. For Khatt Books, Amsterdam, 2008 – 2010. Edited by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares. The cover illustration was rendered by Naji El Mir and uses the StoryLine typeface by Max Kisman, Naji El Mir, Hisham Youssef. The Arabic text was typeset with Khajag Apelian.
More images soon!