Arabic Lettering Workshop,
Episode 11: Kalila wa Dimna​​​​​​​
Yara Khoury and Khajag Apelian
November 22 — 23, 2018

ALW is a series of workshops about Arabic lettering. Every episode takes on a different theme. Under the subject of Ministry of graphic design, this episode of ALW explores the idea of authority using one of the most ancient and popular fables of all time, Kalila Wa Dimna, a collection of stories written in the tongue of animals by Bedba the Indian scholar and later translated into Arabic by Ibn Al Muqaffa’. Participants select two to three keywords from the provided stories and made expressive lettering pieces in Arabic, reflecting the meaning of the words and the overall story. Through this process, the participants learn about the main parameters that define the Arabic script and letterforms and play around with them to see the different results that can be generated. The next day, participants incorporate the designed words into page layouts using cut-and-paste techniques.

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