Periódico (newspaper in Spanish), was originally commissioned by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC. Inspired by old Spanish typographic engravings, mostly from the second half of the 18th Century, we picked out the most relevant details of Spanish typography as the source of that inspiration, and instead of making a revival or an interpretation of these models, we started from scratch to create a truly original font family. The goal was to achieve a very distinctive family, functional and versatile at the same time, and reminiscent of old Spanish typography. Although we have borrowed many details from the old Spanish typography, like the nail, which is present in the letters U, G, or J, which we worked and evolved in order to be applied on other letters, we have also left behind several others. One example is the tilde of the ñ engraved by Gerónimo Gil, a very distinctive element of Spanish typography that was intentionally omitted for being too atypical to be used in a contemporary font.  The letters a and g are probably the most distinctive of the Periódico family. The shape of the bowl in the letter a, with the top arch in diagonal position, is very characteristic of old Spanish types. In Periódico, we emphasized this detail by applying it to many other letters (such as g, j, and t) up to a point that it became the leitmotiv of this family. The formal finish of serifs and terminals is something that gives great personality to any typeface, so we came up with plenty of alternatives in order to find the exact shape we wanted: sober, elegant, and contemporary. Even though the serifs are geometric, the upper terminals have a curve with a dynamic very similar to the arch in the a or the notch in the j. The terminals in the capitals follow the same style, but, in this case, the inspiration comes from Pradell’s Missal, which on the other hand has been influenced by the types engraved by Johann Michael Fleischman in the Netherlands. Eighteenth-Century types were mostly used for printing books. Therefore, they had very generous proportions (large ascendents and descendants) and high contrast, but today, these characteristics do not work well in newspapers because of the worldwide demand for more space-saving fonts. The adaptation of the type’s proportions to be used for a newspaper was one of the most interesting parts of the project, specially the time taken to find the perfect balance between the x height\ and legibility. Periódico is presented in 30 different styles, for a total of 30 fonts—10 for text (from Light to Bold) and 20 for display sizes (from Thin to Ultra Black); this family results in an extensive system capable of solving all the needs of a large publication.

SHILIA – AN ARABIC FONT THAT LIVES HAND IN HAND WITH LATIN TEXT CHARACTERS A special design principle underlies the Arabic font Shilia created by Mamoun Sakkal: the form of the characters means that they harmonise happily with sans serif Latin fonts, such as Univers. Because of this, Shilia is the ideal choice for any bilingual project and for use in international corporate branding. Shilia™ had its beginnings in the 1970s. Taking one of the oldest variants of Arabic script, the minimalist Kufic, as his inspiration, Mamoun Sakkal fashioned simple stroke shapes that are combined according to a geometric grid. Shilia is at home in both worlds, that of the East and that of the West. And although Shilia has been primarily designed to be used as a display font, it is also ideal for setting shorter texts. Before being published by Linotype, Shilia underwent major adaptation and updating, and is now available in the modern OpenType format. Mamoun Sakkal increased the characters available per individual typeface variant to over 1,800, and his daughter, Aida Sakkal, worked on programming the extensive OpenType features for the font. There are numerous ligatures that can be used to provide suitable variation and avoid repetition within a given context, and many special features such as the dots under the initial and final segments of words being automatically centralised. Shilia not only supports Arabic, but also Persian and Urdu. Special character combinations for setting texts in these languages, particularly Urdu, are provided through OpenType. And there are a total of 19 stylistic sets with additional character variants available to the user. An example of Urdu text Shilia is available in eight weights, from UltraLight to Black. The corresponding condensed versions are in the course of preparation. Along with the Arabic characters, all of the typeface versions include matching Latin alphabet letters of Adrian Frutiger’s Linotype Univers® family, making Shilia intrinsically suitable for setting bilingual texts. A set of ornaments carefully designed to allow for numerous compositions of bands and decorative patterns rounds off the range of characters on offer. With its 21 weights, Shilia is one of the most extensive of Arabic typeface families that is currently on the market. Its clear and well-balanced forms emphasise the linear nature of the font without allowing it to appear sterile or artificial. Shilia not only cuts a good figure as a display font for signage or in artistic projects, thanks to its substantial range of features, the font family can also be used to set texts, such as corporate and administrative documents. In addition, but the full compatibility between the Arabic and Latin characters makes Shilia the perfect choice for international and multilingual design projects.