Font Designer – Tim Holloway
Designer Tim Holloway created the fonts Karim® (1994) and Mitra® (1975). Tim Holloway worked for a time at Linotype Ltd. in the UK, where he was a colleague of Fiona Ross.
Karim was designed in response to a demand for a traditional text face adapted to setting Quranic commentaries. Karim font is the standard character set version.
Within the constraints of the standard character set and typesetting program, the design aims to recall the style and fluency of manuscript Naskh without, however, reproducing the idiosyncracies of any particular calligrapher.
The line weight chosen is heavier than usual for a traditional light face in order to benefit the reproduction of small size Tafsir text. A tall kaf, deep descenders and slightly inclined alifs and lams all help to suggest the cursiveness of manuscript. The type-style that emerges is characterised by restraint and clarity: qualities suited to Karim’s original purpose, and ones that recommend it for wider use.
Karim font contains two weights, Karim light and Karim light Latin Figures.
Mitra is a modern Arabic text typeface with two weights: Mitra Light and Mitra Bold. Both of the fonts ship in the OpenType format, and include Latin glyphs (from Optima® Medium and Optima Bold, respectively) inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages.
The two Mitra fonts incorporate the Basic Latin character set (Western CP 1252 Latin 1/ANSI and Macintosh US Roman) and the Arabic character set (CP 1256), which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.
Karim was designed in response to a demand for a traditional text face adapted to setting Quranic commentaries. Karim font is the standard character set version.
Within the constraints of the standard character set and typesetting program, the design aims to recall the style and fluency of manuscript Naskh without, however, reproducing the idiosyncracies of any particular calligrapher.
The line weight chosen is heavier than usual for a traditional light face in order to benefit the reproduction of small size Tafsir text. A tall kaf, deep descenders and slightly inclined alifs and lams all help to suggest the cursiveness of manuscript. The type-style that emerges is characterised by restraint and clarity: qualities suited to Karim’s original purpose, and ones that recommend it for wider use.
Karim font contains two weights, Karim light and Karim light Latin Figures.
Mitra is a modern Arabic text typeface with two weights: Mitra Light and Mitra Bold. Both of the fonts ship in the OpenType format, and include Latin glyphs (from Optima® Medium and Optima Bold, respectively) inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages.
The two Mitra fonts incorporate the Basic Latin character set (Western CP 1252 Latin 1/ANSI and Macintosh US Roman) and the Arabic character set (CP 1256), which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.