mastodon 4.6.9The studio of Mark Jamra and Neil Patel. We create type systems for multiple scripts, custom proprietary typefaces and word marks.
Just finished (for now): the first digital fonts of the Gbékoun writing system, produced under the guidance from the Fon community in the West African country of Benin. We followed up with a keyboard, also to their specifications, to make text input and digital content creation possible.
Just published: IDEA magazine’s latest issue looks at the work of Toshi Omagari (@tosche_e@typo.social), international type design at Typotheque (@typotheque@typo.social), and features an article about our Kigelia typeface family for Africa. IDEA is a quarterly magazine published in Tokyo, Japan since 1953 that focuses on graphic design and typography.
ADLaM Display, the font we designed with Andrew Footit for Microsoft, is available now at Google Fonts @googlefonts@typo.social. It contains ADLaM and Latin complements.
A really nice article about our friend Fallou Ngom, who was an important advisor to us when we were designing Kigelia Arabic. It's great to see word is getting out about his vital research on African Ajami and the series of online archives he has built up.
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing-system/
One of the projects we’ve been working on pro bono for the past few years is beginning to bear fruit. The N’ko script has attained “Basic” status in Unicode CLDR v.44. Neil collaborated on this with the World Organization for the Development of N’ko and also acted as liaison to the Unicode Consortium.
The status determines how well languages are supported on laptops, phones, and other computing devices.
Github: https://tinyurl.com/yk6vffy4
Well, we finally got around to updating and refocussing our website. Now it's a better reflection of the work we’ve been doing for the past seven years.
Neil gave a workshop in the “ADLaM Romanization for Library Cataloging” webinar by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. The video is online here: https://tinyurl.com/mun57p8t
Neil’s workshop, “Technological Tools: Development and Demonstrations,” is at 22:52 – 36:16.
We've updated the ADLaM Display font we designed last year with a Latin complement. It's available for download here: https://bit.ly/423RsLY
And while you’re there, read the fascinating story and watch the videos about the ADLaM script!
More info about the font here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrlfHEJOnNu/
Right-to-left, connected scripts began performing much better in Adobe products last year, so we’re pleased to announce that we’ve added Kigelia’s Adlam and N’ko complements to our offering at Adobe Fonts. The entire family is available now.
Our article “African ʿAjamī in the Digital Environment: Typographic and Technological Challenges” is now accessible online and will be available in print in 2024. It's one of several chapters written by scholars of the Arabic script in Africa in a special two-volume series of “Islamic Africa” from Brill. (A few of the issues described in our chapter were briefly outlined in our presentation at TypeCon in August.)
Another great Igbo story book published by Ọkpara House in Chicago, which uses our typeface Kigelia throughout. “Anyanwụ” tells the story of why the sun lives in the sky and features endearing illustrations by Ben Onuorah.
Written by: Obiora Nwazota
Illustrator: Ben Onuorah
Typefaces:
Headlines — Swear (James Edmondson @ohnotypeco@bird.makeup)
Body — Kigelia
Pics of individual pages on our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cx5yZTTu2uB/
Pics from our recent working trip to West Africa are on our Instagram account. In chronological order:
1. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnmdx4xMqqI/
2. https://www.instagram.com/p/CnpSQIBLSBm/
3. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnw72PioyFM/
4. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoIEjqWLObA/
5. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoLINFZuiUO/
@Okay@typo.social @ohnotypeco@bird.makeup We're assuming that. The colophon states that Unyimeabasi Udoh did the cover design and typesetting with Nick Adam of Span in Chicago.
New in the Google Play Store: the keyboard we developed for using the fonts we made of the Sunuwar script of Eastern Nepal and Sikkim, India.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamra_patel.sunuwarkeyboard