Niaz Mirmobini This interactive demo-lecture explores how the complex behavior of Arabic calligraphic shapes contributes to different levels of visual complexity in typography, depending on their contextual position. This complexity emerges from the script’s rich range of design possibilities, including contextual shape variations, stacking order and cascading, compressed constructions, elongation through kashida, and swash variants.
Grounded in ongoing PhD research on perceptual disfluency, the session distinguishes visual complexity from aesthetic preference, predicted reading difficulty, and experienced legibility. Through the comparison and discussion of controlled Arabic-script examples, participants will consider how individual calligraphic features may influence perceived complexity and where different levels of complexity may be appropriate in typographic practice. By treating these features as deliberate and isolatable design parameters, the session connects Arabic-script typography with broader questions in reading and legibility research.