Ali is for Apple: He designed the first Arabic fonts for Mac

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Ali is for Apple: He designed the first Arabic fonts for Mac

Back in the '80s, Dr Ali Al Assam worked on a secret project for the company. Ali says there are things Steve Jobs was spot on about, like fonts.

By Nivriti Butalia/Oscar Yanez

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Published: Fri 24 Mar 2017, 3:40 PM

Last updated: Fri 24 Mar 2017, 6:43 PM

We were worried to start with. That we wouldn't be able to locate the man who developed four Arabic fonts still in the Apple library for Mac back in the day - in the '80s, when the Mac was unheard of, a top secret mission - let alone ambush the creator of Arabic typefaces (fonts?) Geeza, Kufi, Damascus, Baghdad - and ask him a couple of questions.
At an event called WAN IFRA (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishing) at a hotel by the water in Dubai last week, there must have been plenty of folks trying to nab him. Turned out, Dr Ali Al Assam (managing director of KnowledgeView Ltd) was easy enough to nab, and even willing to forego his coffee break to have a chat. And so, we headed to a round table with lunch places laid out. Moving aside cutlery and serviettes shaped like standing triangles, Dr Ali began telling the story of his association with Apple, the time he met Steve Jobs, the early days of graphics, and what to his mind, is the next big revolution in technology.

Can you talk about the beginning? How did your dealings with Apple start?

We developed Arabic for Apple 2 and Apple made a deal with us, by which they would distribute our Arabisation kit in the Middle East from 1982 to '84. In the Middle East, there was virtually no Arabic on computers. It was very early days - there were no graphics.

This was 1984?

Apple called me in. yes, I think, it was 1984. They said, we have a secret project in America. Will you come and help us with it? I was based in London then. So I went there. This is where I met Steve Jobs briefly. They had a secret project in another building. We didn't know how it looked. Apple had a Lisa (computer) that had a mouse and graphics. Steve Jobs and Apple borrowed the ideas from Xerox at the time. The Mac was a small box. But we had simulation on it. And they said, we'd like your help with doing fonts on this Mac in Arabic. In the Middle East, when Apple was releasing this Mac (we didn't know the name, we just knew something revolutionary was going to come). They were producing all the Eastern fonts. Apple was the first US manufacturer. (It was the) vision of Steve Jobs to say, look we are international, it has to be Kanji, Indian, Chinese, Arabic, and it all must look really beautiful... characters appeared in green, very ugly, very small, no graphics, on a black screen. That was a reality then. So, what he was producing was really revolutionary. Now you could see fantastic type on the screen - big small, really revolutionary.  

How many fonts did you work on for the Mac? And how long did it take?

When they were releasing this Mac on the Arabic world, they wanted an application on it to develop four fonts. I stayed with them for a few weeks in Cupertino in the headquarters... kept going and coming between London and Cupertino. I must have gone a year before that, actually. 1983. We launched it near Tower Bridge in a hotel together. They launched the Mac and we launched our desktop software on it. It was a joint launch between us an Apple. We did four fonts. Geeza, the application font is now on every iPhone. We did Geeza, Kufi, Damascus and Baghdad. To do the fonts, the first one took 2 months. Giza took 2 months, and the others took another few months each. But within the first year there were all there. Apple licensed it from us, for a very small price. It was fantastic then. Only a few thousand for it.

Do you feel bad? At the small price?

(laughs)Well, of course. But not really, that's life. When they produced the iPhone and Apple and other devices, all the fonts were all there. And back then, did you imagine the company (Apple) would become so big? No, of course not. We were Apple fans, and Apple had its fans (even then). During Steve Jobs's time, it was like a religion. People were really mad about anything that came from Apple. Nobody imagined there would be an Internet. Nobody thought there would be billions of Macs.  

And your font; it's still there? So it's been timeless?

Yes, timeless. The font is in vector, standard. It's still there. Probably Apple am sure has tweaked it technically but they haven't changed its look. It looks exactly the same.  

You met Steve Jobs. What was that like?

Oh. It was for few minutes only.  

Was he wearing a black sweater?

No, that came later. He had long hair then.
His religious phase in India... Yes, his religious phase taught him about simplicity. He was just another man, the head of Apple. At the time he was important but not like later of course. I didn't tell people about it (the meeting).

So nothing that stands out?

No, not really. Someone introduced us. We met like oi, oi, this is Steve Jobs, this is Ali, he's doing Arabic fonts, oh yes, hello how are you, and you move along. When the Mac came out, I didn't see him after that.  

And Diwan? Is that another font?

Diwan was the company that produced the fonts and Arabic. We created it as a NFP. From 84-95 it was Non For Profit. And then all Arabic newspaper used our software. At the time, Diwan was the one publishing software in the Arab world. We had no competition. Microsoft didn't even produce Arabic at the time. We didn't think it would be the success it was. There were no shareholdings. We were the only ones. All the newspapers had to come to us. Diwan disappeared in '95 and I created knowledge view. And now we have this alliance with PPI media working in the Middle East.  

What happened after Steve Jobs left?

What happened with Steve Jobs. different things happened. (For one) Microsoft became big. Steve Jobs was evicted from Apple and Apple started going down. Industry observers were saying, 'when is Apple going to disappear?' They were counting the days for it to go bankrupt. Then they called Steve back and he revived it again with his genius and so on. Apple was going down. We did not have the dominance, but we were still influential. We started taking 60 per cent of the market again with Arabic newspapers.  

How do you think Apple is doing under Tim Cook?

Well, under Tim Cook, it's doing quite well. Some people say Steve Jobs's innovations have a five-years span. You don't know where the next revolution is going to be. People would say he's dictatorial and so on, but he wasn't. I mean, he was tough. But he managed to create a management class, a culture of innovation. And that management class continued to succeed when he was gone. He allowed a company to be innovative. You need a different type of leadership (for that).  

Your prediction for the next big innovation?

My prediction is that in the next two years, there's going to be the next big innovation. Just follow Apple's patents, then you can guess. Whether it has Steve Jobs's vision, you don't know. He was really quite visionary. Not a saint or a god. But he said the iPad would never be important. And his focus was in the iPhone. And then the iPad became very important. He said he would never do a big screen like the iPad, but tablets are going down. The mobile is the most important one. This mobile is a super computer. (It has the) processing power of a super computer 20 years ago. It's imprisoned in this little device.  

Any innovations in terms of fonts coming up, you think?

I don't think there will be a particular innovation in terms of fonts because now it's a universal approach for all fonts and languages. There are innovations in fonts, but these are no longer needed - you can break the glyphs of any part. The aleph, the ain, the noon, ta. they're composed of the same components. Memory used to be expensive and limited. So we experimented with breaking glyphs of a character. Sub components of a character. But now memory is very cheap. So there's no need. Now, innovation is text-to-speech, speech to text for when people communicate, they can use their voice.  

Can you talk a bit about the font you created, Geeza?

We created 4 fonts, still a part of the Apple library. They had an application font and a system font. Geeza. I know Geeza. I chose the name. So there was a classic Arabic font called Yakout, by Linotype. After 30 years, you lose the copyright. Yakout was all curvy like this. And Macintosh resolution wasn't nice. So I corrected it, made it more straight (sic). We wanted it to have some kind of fixed font. What I did with Yakout, I made it more straight, with monospace and proportional. Geeza is straight. But if you compare Geeza with Yakout, they have common characteristics. Geeza caters for limited resolution of the Macintosh screen. So Geeza was very successful.

And you have relations with Apple now?

Not as strong as before. People have changed. Before we were very, very close.

The director of fonts in Linotype now is Arabic. she's Lebanese. Nadine Chahine...

I don't know her. One of the greatest designers I worked with for many years was Mohamamd Sagar, who passed away in Paris a couple of years ago.He's the one who broke the Arabic characters in bits. Character matrix 8 by 16. Sagar helped me create these characters that were 8 and 16 matrix.

In some points, the Arabic is really fantastic in design -you have the square Kufi that is square pixels. it's fantastic I don't know if you're following the evolution of type design...

I have changed my focus to knowledge system. we call them news social, how people can co-operate, discuss things and reach conclusions in a social environment. But of course I am still very much attached to it. Some of my best friends are still designers. I don't know if you know Ishi Kuno? He designed most of the designs in Japanese for Microsoft, If you go to London, the underground has to be very clear, and that's Ishi Kuno's design. Also, Aurobin Patel.

Aurobindo Patel?

He was with The Economist. Aurobin and Ishi are not Arabic but they are very much interested in Arabic types. Sometimes we meet in the Middle East and go cycling together... Aurobin is the one who created this logo for me (the company logo). That was 1995. We were in his house. He said what about this? (Laughs). I've used it since then. He still advises Indian Newspapers on design. Aurbon Patel designed New Times Roman. And became font of The Times. And it's become a revolutionary font.

What are the challenge for multi-language media? Arabic is more horizontal. But the rhythm of reading Latin is vertical. And you need to make a match. The graphic solution at the end must look similar. As you said, the origin is completely different. Isn't that a challenge?

Yes. We assume Arabic has a single base line. One of the challenges we face later on is how to create a font that has a single base line. My colleagues continued on it. Calligraphers in Iraq, Diwan in Iraq, they started working on the baseline and created some very nice fonts. You need it for the Koran as well. More sophisticated fonts.

Is smartphone reading is going to have an impact on fonts? Are we going to see more Sans Serif? What are we going to see?

People are going to appreciate (fonts) more, absolutely. The technology for display has improved. It's given the designer much more freedom. Choice is much higher and you can do so much more with it.

Which are your favourite fonts? Do you pick newspapers and books based on fonts?

Personally, I like Monotype Lotus, one of the classic Arabic font. And it's a very old font by Monotype. I think it's still one of the best fonts available. Linotype used to be a very good company. Now they have reduced. They still have a very good library of fonts, including this Lotus one. You could get it.

So when you type an email what font do you use?

I use the Macintosh. And it is the application I have done. It's Geeza. It's the one I use. This is the application font in Macintosh. When I write a new email in Arabic and I switch to Arabic . (shows phone screen). yea, this is Geeza, this is the font I created. This is the standard application font. You can see it. This is the one.

Ali, do you have feelings when you write in your own font?

Not really. I feel comfortable with it (laughs) Well, I made it straight for a reason. But actually I prefer it to be a bit bendy.

Maybe you could do a new version.

Yes. It is based on Yakout font. You could get it from Linotype... Geeza is a really very successful font, simpler, very clear, even in high resolution, and the like it. Readability is very nice, especially on mobile.  We designed it to look good on lower resolution. My eyesight may not be good, but I can read it still.

Which are the fonts you don't like?

Oh, there are lots of ugly fonts. There is one called Wakawi - horrible. There is one called Al Harf Al Jadid. It's terrible I think. In my view, that is. Other people will like it very much.

Do fonts tell the story of culture?

Absolutely, yes. Yes.

How much does culture influence fonts?

A lot. Because the dominant culture is the Islamic culture. And Islamic culture had a tremendous influence on fonts. It tells a story. People in the old days weren't allowed to have pictures and drawings. So to express beauty, you expressed it in fonts. It's a way of expressing things you couldn't express otherwise.

So, you're saying probably Arabic has more reflection of culture than the Roman fonts, the Latin fonts. Are you saying that?

Not necessarily. We don't know about other cultures. But if you look at the Chinese and the Kanji and so on, their glyphs are very beautiful. I think they do more with fonts than Arabic, different approaches.

Is the influence of culture dying out with technology coming in?

Not really, no. It makes it flourish. Because technology makes it possible to express better. So it makes type more important than before. Absolutely, yes. Technology is really enabler for producing more beautiful type, and to do more with it than what you do with it. Before it was very limited.. This is humanity's biggest invention, writing. It's going to remain with us for a few thousand years.

Have fonts the ability to get people back to reading?

It can. Yes. It's only the beginning. Very important question, this. Technology enables reading and fonts. Makes it exciting for children to read and write. There is tremendous scope going forward, with education, writing and reading communicating better.

Fonts are more of the future than of the past, don't you think?

It's an essential part of communication. And very much part of art and so on, in all languages. Even in Roman. You can do more with glyphs, you can do more with type. Displays logos done with simple fonts. Royal Society of Arts Logo, it says in just English, but the font is the design, the text is design. With simplicity, you can get excellent design.
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com


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