Type of the Month: Harir, by Bahman Eslami

[Behnam Esfahbod]

One of the main reasons behind creating this group was to promote discussion and criticism of Perso-Arabic typefaces and fonts in a friendly and open space. In this regard, I'd like to start a series of posts, each focused on one Perso-Arabic typefaces, traditional or modern; old or new; display, text or fantasy. This is the first post in these series.

Harir, a modern Arabic typeface in three optical sizes

"Harir is a modern Arabic text typeface featuring three optical sizes, the first typeface of its kind."

"Harir is based on the Naskh calligraphy style, but is designed to work well with or without diacritics. Its letter proportions and stroke contrasts have been adjusted to create consistent word shapes, and dots have been carefully positioned to help balance the negative space between the letters."

"A world of global communications demands fonts that support multiple languages and scripts. After Bahman Eslami completed Harir, Peter Biľak developed a special version of Lava to serve as Harir’s Latin character set, perfectly matching its weight, rhythm and contrast."

Main website: https://www.typotheque.com/blog/harir

And the promotional video: https://vimeo.com/64507513

I like this typeface a lot, and the shape of the dots are my favorites. Also, I think the "Rial" sign is it's golden glyph, highlighting the main features of the type all in one.

What do you like about Harir? Anythink you wanted different? Anything missing in the font family?

Also, I like to know how much do you think is a fair price for such a beautiful, modern, and well-developed font?

Yours,

-Behnam

P.S. Bahman, himself, is a member of this group, so you might be able to get answers to any questions you have.

--

Behnam Esfahbod | بهنام اسفهبد
http://behnam.es/

GPG-FP: 3E7F.B4B6.6F4C.A8AB.9BB9.7520.5701.CA40.259E.0F8B

[Connie Bobroff]

Another font with 'sanah' but no one knows about because it didn't get on the list.

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0601/fontsupport.htm

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[Mostafa Hajizadeh]

Thanks Behnam for starting this series. I like the idea.

I know how hard it is to build and release a font family, so I have more praise and appreciation for Bahman’s work than criticism. I particularly like that he has published his work internationally, now that we don’t have an existing system in Iran.

I appreciate the effort made for making three different optical sizes, but I’m always a little confused about more than two optical sizes (like what Adobe does). Doesn’t it suffice to have a text version and a display version? I’ve never been sure that, say, 12 pt and 9 pt need different fonts. Anyways, it’s better to have them that to not. And this is also introducing a new topic to the world of Arabic typefaces, which is a bonus.

Managing negative spaces, which seems to be a serious concern of Bahman in this project, is one thing, but another important and related issue is color, and that seems to be neglected here. Actually, judging a type’s color is a little hard with these specimens, but in the few places that long texts are shown I think I see a lot of white and black spots. I’m not sure I’m correct in seeing this color inconsistency with the given material, but if I’m right this is surprising for a typeface to pay so much attention to something such as negative space, and yet don’t care about consistent color.

Aesthetically, this typeface strikes me as “too calligraphic,” specially the bold weight, but let’s assume that’s just personal taste, as it seems that a lot of people are liking this typeface probably for this very reason. (Like those who like the Rial sign!)

Well, that should be enough criticism! Kudos to Bahman for making this typeface. I’m looking forward to his future works.

And about the price, I guess you mean in Iran, because it already has a price for the international market. I don’t believe a low price would help. For one thing, a higher price works against pirating, because less people who are buying something with a high price would probably share its illegal copies. It also covers for the cost of pirating (which will happen, anyway). A premium price makes it possible to make designing type a sustainable job, to work more and more on type design, and it raises the bar for expected quality of typefaces. On the other hand, unreasonably high prices would lead to not business at all. So I’m thinking about something between 100K and 200K Tomans for a single font. Pricing for bundles and multiple users can be calculated based on this with appropriate discounts. The pricing for web font can also be chosen in regards to this base price.

Best regards,

Mostafa

On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 3:26:04 PM UTC+3:30, Connie Bobroff wrote:

Another font with 'sanah' but no one knows about because it didn't get on the list.

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0601/fontsupport.htm

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Behnam Esfahbod <beh...@behnam.es> wrote:

One of the main reasons behind creating this group was to promote discussion and criticism of Perso-Arabic typefaces and fonts in a friendly and open space. In this regard, I'd like to start a series of posts, each focused on one Perso-Arabic typefaces, traditional or modern; old or new; display, text or fantasy. This is the first post in these series.

Harir, a modern Arabic typeface in three optical sizes

"Harir is a modern Arabic text typeface featuring three optical sizes, the first typeface of its kind."

"Harir is based on the Naskh calligraphy style, but is designed to work well with or without diacritics. Its letter proportions and stroke contrasts have been adjusted to create consistent word shapes, and dots have been carefully positioned to help balance the negative space between the letters."

"A world of global communications demands fonts that support multiple languages and scripts. After Bahman Eslami completed Harir, Peter Biľak developed a special version of Lava to serve as Harir’s Latin character set, perfectly matching its weight, rhythm and contrast."

Main website: https://www.typotheque.com/blog/harir

And the promotional video: https://vimeo.com/64507513

I like this typeface a lot, and the shape of the dots are my favorites. Also, I think the "Rial" sign is it's golden glyph, highlighting the main features of the type all in one.

What do you like about Harir? Anythink you wanted different? Anything missing in the font family?

Also, I like to know how much do you think is a fair price for such a beautiful, modern, and well-developed font?

Yours,

-Behnam

P.S. Bahman, himself, is a member of this group, so you might be able to get answers to any questions you have.

--

Behnam Esfahbod | بهنام اسفهبد
http://behnam.es/

GPG-FP: 3E7F.B4B6.6F4C.A8AB.9BB9.7520.5701.CA40.259E.0F8B

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[Bahman Eslami]

Thanks Connie I sent a message to include harir in the list.

I appreciate the effort made for making three different optical sizes, but I’m always a little confused about more than two optical sizes (like what Adobe does). Doesn’t it suffice to have a text version and a display version? I’ve never been sure that, say, 12 pt and 9 pt need different fonts. Anyways, it’s better to have them that to not. And this is also introducing a new topic to the world of Arabic typefaces, which is a bonus.

More options is suitable for end-user. There is no harm to create more optical sizes, the end user could choose not to buy them. H&Fj offers seven optical sizes for the Didot type family which is a brilliant approach in my opinion.

Managing negative spaces, which seems to be a serious concern of Bahman in this project, is one thing, but another important and related issue is color, and that seems to be neglected here. Actually, judging a type’s color is a little hard with these specimens, but in the few places that long texts are shown I think I see a lot of white and black spots. I’m not sure I’m correct in seeing this color inconsistency with the given material, but if I’m right this is surprising for a typeface to pay so much attention to something such as negative space, and yet don’t care about consistent color.

IMHO there is no such thing as color in arabic script. Because the rhythm is uneven compared to latin script and you can't find a constant color in the text. There is always trade-off between beauty and balanced negative space in designing an arabic typeface, which in my case I chose to create more appealing word shapes and not to mangle letterforms to produce a balanced color. There are also other arabic typefaces that produce even color through text but I can't stand watching them. The designer tried to create a rectangle shaped bouma, which is common in latin script and letter proportions become strange.

Aesthetically, this typeface strikes me as “too calligraphic,” specially the bold weight, but let’s assume that’s just personal taste, as it seems that a lot of people are liking this typeface probably for this very reason. (Like those who like the Rial sign!)

I think calligraphy is foundation of every letter shape we see in our daily life. You can trace calligraphy traditions in the typeface we are reading right now, even though they don't seem very obvious; One thing is contrast, it's reduced dramatically but it's still there. 

About the price, I have no say in it. I was only the designer and I supervised every detail of the font production and I'm quite sure harir fonts was very hard to be user ready. Typotheque created some expensive tools to produce the final fonts and proofing the fonts took a long time which was very frustrating. I hope anyone could enjoy using it.

Thanks for your comments,

Bahman

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