Parachute® has created over the years some of the most sophisticated contemporary typefaces, supporting simultaneously hundreds of languages. Typefaces such as the Champion Script Pro, Centro Pro, Handbook Pro, Beau Sans Pro and of course the DIN Pro series, have been appreciated and used by designers worldwide.  Now, for the first time, the competitive DIN Text Pro family is enhanced with Arabic. Parachute® collaborated with designer Hasan Abu Afash to create 2 new versions. DIN Text Arabic is the basic Arabic version which includes Latin and supports all variations of the Arabic script such as Persian, Urdu and Pashto. The second version DIN Text Universal is the most advanced DIN superfamily ever. It combines the powerful DIN Text Pro with DIN Text Arabic. All together it supports hundreds of languages, proving to be an essential tool for corporations which operate internationally.

We spoke to designer Hasan Abu Afash about the 2 new DIN families and this is what he told us: “The particular project was very challenging as we had to not only design a matching Arabic version but also incorporate within the same font 4 different scripts i.e. Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic and Greek -bringing the number of glyphs to 3320 per font- as well as enhance it with 30 advanced opentype features and kerning for all languages. It took about a year to complete the whole family which consists of eight weights from extra black to hairline.

The brief was clear. We wanted to match Arabic to the other three scripts in a way that will not compromise its cultural integrity or disturb the essential qualities of the Arabic script and its powerful tradition. Furthermore, our goal was to create an arabic superfamily with typographic value and a variety of weights to accommodate a wide range of text and display needs”.

The design methodology
The Arabic script has a number of different styles of calligraphy, so obviously the very first step is to decide which style is most suitable. It was decided to use the kufi style since its simple geometric and uniform shapes can relate better to sans serif fonts such as Din Text. For a small number of glyphs though, the naskh approach was implemented in order to blend softer familiar shapes with the more stiff geometric nature of kufi. This is in tune with the font’s original guidelines to make the latin part of the DIN standard more ‘typographically correct’.
The project was divided into 2 major stages: the design stage and the programming stage. During the first stage, Hasan worked closely with Panos Vassiliou who supervised the project. A long time was spent to get the base glyphs right for the very first weight. A lot of discussion took place and several alternate forms of each letter were designed before an agreement was reached for their final shape (blue highlight).

According to Hasan, “I started the matching process by harmonizing the optical weight and height of the alif and then proceeded to work on tah comparing its optical weight and shape to that of latin b and n. No attempt was made to match elements of the arabic letters to the latin x-height as arabic does not have a single equivalent to the x-height. I revised and adjusted both alif and tah a number of times at this stage. This provides a good starting point for the harmonization, while leaving most of the other Arabic design decisions independent. I designed seen as a hybrid model based on kufi with a couple of naskh details. I completed the glyphs and waited for Panos’ comments who also made further adjustments to my designs. Then an encoding file was created to include all arabic glyphs according to Unicode 5.2 and was further enhanced with an extensive array of arabic ligatures“.

As soon as the whole set of glyphs was completed, Hasan moved on to the following stage which is programming. There are several opentype features such as mark positioning that are still not supported by FontLab, so the next best solution is Microsoft VOLT which has a very powerful interface for programming complicated scripts such as arabic.

Kerning is equally important as any other part of programming. This particular family already included a large number of kerning pairs for scripts such as Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, but several more were added for Arabic. The last section of programming was allocated to mark positioning which is a very tedious and time consuming process.

As soon as the design work and programming for the regular weight was completed, Hasan focused on the extra thin and bold weights, while Panos completed the design for extreme weights such as hairline and extra black. There’s only eight variations to DIN Universal and DIN Arabic. Italics are not included as italic is not really an option used for arabic.

Quality Control & Fine Tuning
During the implementation period we run several tests on screen and numerous pages were printed to check the typeface under operational conditions. Proper mark positioning was extensively tested and double-checked, troublesome glyphs and marks were highlighted and sent back and forth for further adjustment and fine-tuning.

Large type families with thousands of glyphs are prone to glyph misplacement. To eliminate such a possibility we devised  two sets of print tables which we used to check the proper position of glyphs as well as do a thorough test on opentype features.

Summary
DIN Universal is Parachute’s most ambitious text typeface, as for the first time a contemporary arabic equivalent to this comprehensive DIN series of fonts is designed. In fact, this set of fonts contains the most complete and powerful array of arabic features commercially available. The four major scripts Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic and Greek are now matched across the design of the whole family, respecting at the same time each one’s modern cultural identity. With its vast array of weights, the extended support for numerous languages, its careful and detailed design, it will prove to be extremely valuable for many complex corporate international projects. On the other hand, the scaled down DIN Arabic is a less expensive version for designers who are mostly interested in Arabic.

Links
DIN Text Arabic
DIN Text Universal
Arabic in an emerging global market

PF Din Mono is the latest addition to the ever-growing set of DIN superfamilies by Parachute®. It was based on its proportional counterpart DIN Text Pro, but was completely redesigned to reflect its new identity. DIN Mono is a monospace typeface which is comprised of characters with fixed width. Traditionally, monospaced fonts have been used to create forms, tables and documents that require exact text line lengths and precise character alignment. DIN Monospace, on the other hand, can prove to be more than a useful typeface for technical applications. In the world of proportionality, DIN Monospace stands out as a fresh new alternative to the popular standard, particularly for publishing and branding applications. Additional care was given to the aesthetic form and its pleasing characteristics. The spacing attributes of the glyphs were redefined and legibility was further improved by revising or changing the shape of all the letterforms.

For instance, characters such as ‘m’ and ‘w’ were made narrower and other like ‘f’, ‘i’, ‘l’ and ‘t’ were made wider in order to fit into the default character width evenly. As a result, the stem thickness for some characters was altered but was balanced out by adjusting the overall color of the glyph.  Furthermore, kerning was not included in order to preserve the monospace nature of this typeface.

The Monospace family consists of 12 weights including true-italics. Currently, it supports Latin, Eastern European and Baltic. A new Din Mono Pro version is in the making and will be released soon. It will be offered as an upgrade to all licensees of the simple Mono version. Altogether the Parachute DIN series is a large set of 5 sophisticated super families with a total of 72 weights. It includes the following families: Text Pro, Display Pro, Text Condensed Pro, Text Compressed Pro and Mono.

Parachute® has just released some very elegant DIN hairline weights. Ever since its first appearance back in 2003, the Parachute series has become the most comprehensive and sophisticated set of DIN typefaces ever. With its vast array of weights, the extended support for all European languages which includes Greek and Cyrillic, its careful and detailed design it has proved valuable to many complex corporate projects. Now a new set of hairline weights has been released.

These new weights come to accommodate the needs of some very demanding designers working on several publishing and branding applications. Altogether the Parachute DIN series is an overkill set of 4 superfamilies with a total of 60 weights. Each superfamily consists of 15 weights with an average 1280 glyphs per font.

The Din Text Pro series was based on the original standards but was completely redesigned to fit typographic requirements. It has lowercase ascenders that are higher than the capitals, varying letter proportions and italics that are not a mechanically-obliqued version of the regular weights, but rather true-italics. The letterforms divert from the stiff geometric structure of the original and introduce instead elements which are familiar, softer and easier to read. The other two superfamilies Condensed and Compressed share the same attributes as the original.

Din Display Pro, on the other hand, was designed as an alternative to the Din Text Pro series. While Din Display seems to retain DIN’s basic characteristics, it shines with its sharper corners and contemporary look. This superfamily, just like the other three, is enhanced with true-italics.

Adamant Pro is the latest release announced by Parachute® today. This typeface was designed by Vedran Eraković, a young designer from Serbia. Vedran was born in Split, Croatia but lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia. He graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, University of Arts, the Department of Applied Graphics, where obtained a Master’s Degree in 2009. He is involved in calligraphy, graphic design, typeface design as well as newspaper and magazine design. Vedran is an art editor at the Serbian publisher “Politika Newspapers and Magazines”. As a freelance designer and calligrapher he worked with many institutions in his country and cooperated with FontShop Berlin. He has won several awards and recognitions in the field of graphic and typeface design in Serbia.
Vedran explains when and how he started working with Adamant Pro:
“It took me about two years to complete the Adamant typeface. I started to work on it a few years ago, after I came to Politika. This is the time I entered the world of newspaper design. At that time we were involved in the redesign of the newspapers and magazines, therefore I was thinking a lot about newspaper fonts and was purchasing a lot of domestic and foreign newspapers and magazines…
After a while, I was inspired to do my own typeface family that would be very legible and usable in a variety of printing conditions, even in very poor conditions, such as newspaper printing.

I used to often change my ideas while was designing the previous fonts, and even drop the font and start a new one. However, when I was making Adamant, everything went relatively easily. Probably because I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish, and set clear goals: creating a readable and appealing font, usable for setting long texts (as in books and magazines), and this meant adherence to certain rules, such as: large x-height, pronounced horizontal (the process of reading is carried horizontally, so fonts which have pronounced vertical, such as “modern faces”, make reading slow), low contrast between thick and thin lines, sturdy serifs, and so on. I decided to create a typeface that is between serif and slab-serif style.

Also, in order to be legible, the letters must be easily recognizable, and this means to have simple, familiar shapes. The apertures are wide, lower case “e” has a large eye, etc., all these details are also important for easy differentiation of letters in small sizes.

The capital letters are not very high compared to lowercase, in order not to look too emphasized in text and thus hinder reading. This is especially important if names and initials appear often, such as in newspaper body text. For the same reason, the capital numbers are a little lower than capital letters.

There are six weights, from Light to Extra Bold, in roman and italic forms. They are finely balanced, with low contrast among them, so that they can be easily combined, depending on the type of paper and print conditions. I spend a lot of time setting basic weights, such as regular and bold, and after that everything went relatively easily, thanks to multiple master technology.  It was very important to make a lot of weights and to set them correctly, because, for instance, the same weight which is suitable for setting newspaper could be too dark for setting book or magazine. If so, one can use the “light” weight, for example, for setting body text in magazines.

My goal was not only to make sturdy fonts suitable for using at small sizes, but also to make a contemporary family that would be a little warmer in larger sizes. I achieved this by combining sharp and soft-edged strokes, where it was natural and logical. This can be seen at the beginning and end of strokes, for instance. Serifs are made in that way, too. They are non-bracketed, in order to be more dynamic in large sizes.

The glyphs have natural, humanistic forms and calligraphy probably helped me to achieve this. Although the glyphs are quite simplified, I think one can feel a subtle calligraphic influence.
The first sketches were made mainly in pencil, but sometimes I wrote a letter using the calligraphic pen, in order to get a natural form of letter or the exact angle. Later, I simplified and changed the forms using a computer. Some letters include their alternative forms, with or without serifs, such as the letters a, e, c, f… The letters without serifs are practical for use in very small sizes, for example, below 9pt. When these glyphs are used in text, they make it look brighter and more legible, especially if low quality paper is used. The serif version can be used in larger sizes or headlines, because the headlines should look more compact, and tracking is usually set narrow. These versions are available via the Stylistic sets or the glyphs palette in programs such as InDesign, Illustrator and Quark.

Adamant Pro has already been tested in different print conditions, newspapers, books, magazines and posters psrticularly the Политика (Politika) newspaper, the journal Задужбина (Vuk’s Endowment), the women’s magazine Ana as well as the magazine Русија данас (Russia today). Some photos are attached, in order to show how the fonts look in real use. As can be seen, sometimes the same fonts may look completely different, depending on the way in which they are used. They may look strong and traditional, and sometimes modern or gently. I think this is an important feature, because the graphic designer has more flexibility with such faces.”

more on Adamant Pro

Last September we decided to redecorate our office by placing 3D typography on a wall using an inspiring quote by Oscar Wilde “i have the simplest of tastes, i’m always satisfied with the best”. It was during this process which involved cutting and painting the letters when Stavros started taking pictures. Some of them turned out so good that we decided to place them as wallpapers on our desktops. Two of these, White Letter Mess and Out of the Dark are available free from Parachute’s website.
Meanwhile the third one, Disturbing the Uncool is a concept which came up last June at a local pub where we usually hang out on Thursdays with friends and partners after work. Panos had just come back from the ED Awards ceremony in Stockholm and we were also kind of celebrating. In between xx jokes, pickup lines, alcoholic experiences, designer gossips and ideas, this particular statement did not seem bad at all. Anyhow, the idea was turned into a poster and the following week 50 copies were given out at the pub. Later in November it attracted more public attention at the Adobe D-Day Conference. Now, it is available online as a free wallpaper from Parachute® at the following link.

Download the wallpapers here