The bilingual (Arabic and English) handwritten font seen on this site, and elsewhere accompanying the brand, was created as a representation of the handwritten informality that comes with note taking. The font can be seen on the website as the hashtags on the descriptor line of the FIND logo and on the notebook page.
We began by using an existing handwritten font for the English, but it was very difficult to find an appropriately equivalent Arabic version of that font, let alone an Arabic handwritten font at all. Because of the nature of this project and the importance of having equivalent bilingual content and design, the only logical solution was to develop an Arabic and English handwritten font especially for FIND.
The process of creating both the Arabic and English versions of the FIND handwritten font was very experimental because of the mere fact that it had to be, look, and function as a handwritten font.
Firstly, we needed to find the best way to have a digitized font still appear handwritten. We began by writing the entire alphabet, in English and Arabic, with different pens using different weights. We then scanned some of the ones that we thought worked best and digitized a few characters by tracing over them using Glyphs App to find out which worked best when digitized.
After selecting the appropriate digitized pen weight, we digitized the entire alphabet in English and Arabic. However, we faced a problem matching both scripts, the Arabic and the English. After digitizing them, some characters in both languages appeared heavier or lighter, so we had to redraw the entire alphabet in both languages using only a few characters as the base. This way, we were able to create a more consistent weight for all the characters in the font.
While designing, we realized that the handwriting started to become formal because of the alignment on the baseline and very similar x-heights. In response, we decided to move a few letters off the baseline and create some inconsistent x-heights, ascender, and descender heights for the characters in English. We also changed the loop height, tooth height, ascender, and descender heights in the Arabic, resulting in a uniquely designed Arabic and English handwritten font specifically for FIND that works with the brand.
