Yara Khoury Nammour What happens when Arabic typography is examined through the frequency of the letterforms that shape its visual texture?
This talk presents a quantitative and visual investigation into the frequency of Arabic letterforms and their contextual variations across an extensive corpus of Arabic texts. Developed as part of a residency at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT), the research uses a custom-developed software tool to count and map Arabic allographs and their variations, revealing recurring patterns within the written language that are often difficult to perceive through conventional typographic analysis alone.
The study considers how the frequency and distribution of letterforms contribute to the rhythm, density, texture, and visual balance of Arabic text. By bringing computational methods into dialogue with type design and visual analysis, the research offers another way of understanding Arabic script—not only as a linguistic system, but as a complex visual system shaped by repetition, variation, and proportion.
The project opens new possibilities for Arabic type research and design, suggesting how quantitative data on letterform usage might inform decisions about character development, proportion, spacing, testing, and the broader study of typographic principles.