KHATT Foundation is a research centre Research center on Arabic Typography and design from the Middle East and North Africa, based in Amsterdam. I interned at the studio in 2015, where I designed several templates for the two bilingual books on Dia Al-Azzawi and AbdulKader Arnaout. However, at the time, the content wasn't ready yet, so I mostly had images to work with.
One really exciting aspect of the creation of these books was the attention to typography. Given that the focus on of the research centre is typography, I would spend hours analysing details typefaces and think about what would works best and where.
One of the books even required created a whole new typeface based on the artist's sketches, so it could be used throughout the book for the titles.
Working on the cover was also very exciting. Azzawi and Arnaout created very colourful and engaging works throughout their careers; it was great fun to interpret them and repurpose them.
As I mentioned, I did not have the final content of the bilingual books, so I went off previous publications from the series regarding the content pages, the credits, etc...
For the inside, I used whatever copy was available already. I mostly created and finalised the templates that would be used when I'd leave. All that would be left to do was drag and drop the information.
The books were finalised about a year later and are available for purchase on their website.
