‘Thwaites’ typeface is fully dedicated to one of my best Canadian friends who I do cherish and value highly. This great and industrious Canadian friend is ‘James Douglas Thwaites’ who lives along with his good-natured family in British Columbia, Canada. For me, James is like a source of inspiration and I do consider him as an ideal in my life. Our strong friendship has started since 1999 and I hope that it will endure just to the last moment of my life. Sometimes I see him as the writer and poet that I learn a lot from, sometimes I see him as a devoted religious minister that I try to understand more about his teachings, and other times I see him as the educator that I strive to imitate verbatim in my life. When I want to talk more about this Canadian friend, I will not be able to give him his due in full. Thus, I will instead mention some excerpts of his biography that he wrote himself saying that: “James D. Thwaites is a self-accomplished man. Having worked in various fields including restaurant management and cleaning, he has achieved his goals of being a full-time teacher, past-time writer, and volunteer religious minister for the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. His personal and academic pursuits have led him to be published in various magazines, newspapers, self-published books, and websites, including his now defunct ‘poetryofthemonth.com’ website. He continues to learn and augment the craft of writing while working primarily in early literacy and delayed literacy learners, teaching reading and literature to a wide age range of students. He views his religious endeavors as an extension of his academic ones. He teaches others both as a public speaker and in one-on-one situations, teaching about the benefits of submission to God and to His teachings. His future goals include expanding his ministry and continuing his writing.” The name ‘Thwaites’ itself comes from Great Britain and originated from the last Viking raids upon England, being an Anglicized version of a Scandinavian term meaning—depending on the source material—either "a place that is difficult to approach" or "a small thicket of trees." Another recitation mentions that ‘Thwaites’ can be described also as an English surname but one of pre 7th century Norse-Viking origins. It may be either topographical or locational, and is derived from the word "thveit", meaning a clearing or farm. As a locational surname it originates from any one of the various places called "Thwaite", found in several parts of Northern England and East Anglia to the south. The various modern spelling forms include Thwaite, Thwaites, Thwaytes, Thoytes, Twaite, Twatt, Twaites, Tweats and Twite. The name, although often appearing unique to outsiders, can often be found within other famous names like Braithwaite, Goldthwaites, or Misslethwaites. With various spellings, some families not including the ‘e’ or the ‘s’ at the end, Thwaites and its derivations—although not exceedingly common—is a name found worldwide. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is simply a sans-serif streamlined, stylish, and versatile font. It is designed using a combination of thick and thin strokes for its +585 characters. Its character set supports nearly most of the Central, Eastern, and Western European languages using Latin scripts including the Irish language. The typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media. It is also absolutely preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publication, press, services, and production industries. It can create a very impressive impact when used in headlines, posters, titles, products’ surfaces, logos, medical packages, product and corporate branding, and also signage. It has also both of lining and old-style numerals which makes it more suitable for any printing or designing purposes. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is really the cannot-miss choice for anyone who wants to possess unique artistic and modern designs produced using this streamlined typeface.

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.