Industry: Design

Type Design for an Arabic Display Font Family

Combined 12-weight system spanning display and text, rooted in mid-century Middle Eastern print culture

Sakkal Saad Poster is a display Arabic Naskh family designed by Dr. Mamoun Sakkal and Aida Sakkal, drawing on the expressive newspaper and poster typography of the Middle East from the 1960s–1980s. It pairs with the companion text family Sakkal Saad; together the two families form a combined system of 12 weights with harmonised metrics and shared OpenType features. Heavier poster weights increase stroke contrast along the baseline to gain vertical presence without significantly widening horizontal line length. A custom version of Aneto—modified with Arabic-styled dots and punctuation—is bundled to support multiscript settings.

Set in Sakkal Saad Poster, Aneto

Insights

Sakkal Saad Poster and Sakkal Saad share harmonised metrics, enabling designers to move between the two families within a single project.
Heavier poster weights increase contrast along the baseline stroke, adding vertical mass without substantially extending word width horizontally.
Justification tooling includes three kashida widths, adjustable space width, and multiple swash lengths—including a compact variant for tight settings—all accessible via stylistic sets.
Each style contains over 3,000 glyphs with contextual alternates and stylistic sets that can be combined for compounded OpenType features.