29LT IDRIS: A Naskh Type System

29LT Idris is a modern typeface that skillfully combines an Arabic Naskh calligraphic style with a Serif Latin. It offers two versions: Sharp and Flat, each with five weights, resulting in a total of ten styles. As a versatile visual communication tool, Idris provides two distinct typographic voices. Both versions can be used for display type, while the Flat version is recommended for body text.

A contemporary Arabic Naskh, deeply rooted in calligraphic logic and inspired by a 1950s typeface, makes it an ideal publishing typeface. Its echoing Serif Latin gives the typeface a unique design approach and high legibility.

Idris Sharp and Idris Flat share a common variable font with three axes: weight, contrast, and extension. The added extension axis allows users to adjust the width of Arabic cups and baseline elongation, placing an Arabic calligrapher’s tool in the hands of modern digital typesetters. It enables users to justify specific Arabic texts or find the exact width of desired words. It is a unique variable font tool, and it might be the first of its kind to be implemented to date.

While Idris draws inspiration from Berthold Arabic Naskh from the 1950s, it breathes new life into the typeface using the latest Arabic font technology. The font engineering is equally important, if not more so, than the design itself. Idris is built with advanced OpenType features, including calligraphic baseline slant, hundreds of contextual alternates guided by proper Arabic calligraphic rules, contextual dots and accents positioning to avoid overlaps between diacritics and base letterforms, contextual elevation kerning, a leading edge kerning technology for escalating Arabic typefaces, and 13 stylistic sets, providing the typeface with added typographic flexibility and elegance.

Why It Is a Top Pick
Traditionally, the Naskh style is accompanied by the Ruqʿah style, which adds typographic hierarchies to Arabic layouts. Therefore, the 29LT Idris font can be accompanied by the 29LT Ada fonts, as well as any other 29LT typefaces based on the Neo-Naskh style or even Kufic geometric ones. The font technology present within it makes it one of the best Arabic typefaces available in the market, providing users with advanced typographic tools within beautifully crafted glyph outlines.