Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art opened its doors to contemporary Arab art lovers in December 2010 in Doha, Qatar. The museum hosts exhibitions, programs and events that explore and celebrate art by Arab artists. It is an inspiring space for dialogue and scholarship about modern and contemporary art in the region and the Arab diaspora.
An ultra thin font lends “Mathaf” a contemporary corporate image. A strong tension materializes when the curvy pen strokes meet up with the sharp cuts and corners of the letters. A hybrid modern Kufi-Naskh Arabic letterforms complement an edgy lowercase Latin letters to present a unique bilingual Arabic–English type.
Wolf Olins NY are behind the whole corporate images for the museum. I was asked to create an Arabic/Latin font that they will incorporate in the whole corporate identity of the museum starting with the logotype, signage, publications, advertisings, website, promotional items, etc…
The Arabic and English logotypes of the museum are created using the corporate Mathaf font with the “ ha’ ” in the Arabic logotype and the “a” in the English logotype replaced by hand doodle.
Standard and unique Latin ligatures were drawn in the font in order to make the Latin as mush as possible coherent with the Arabic. Latin ligatures with horizontal letter connections amplified the coherence between the Arabic and Latin script.
