Urban Arabic Book 1

Saifi Institute has developed an innovative typeface designed for maximum readability while still resembling the everyday script used in handwriting and everyday printed materials. The font is called "Urban Arabic" and is used in all of Saifi's printed materials to minimize the hurdles of learning a new alphabet faced by beginners and to give a unified look and feel to the Urban Arabic Curriculum. Most letters are grouped into nine families – three are considered "lonely letters" because they do not share characteristics with the any other letter. Each letter in a family shares a basic shape in the beginning and middle positions, and they are distinguished within the family by the number and placement of dots as well as some minor shape changes in homage to the traditional end and independent letter forms. When two or three dots are written together (as in ت or ش) they are combined into a slash or upside-down "v" shape, recalling a common shortcut used in handwriting. The accompanying Latin script was also developed specifically for Urban Arabic to enable smooth reading of mixed Arabic-English texts without having to change the font size or alignment when switching between the two languages. Urban Arabic Book 1 was designed with the Urban Arabic type family.