Arabic Lettering Workshop (Episode 21) East–West

Saturday, 26 April 2025, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm

Kristyan Sarkis & Amir Mahdi Moslehi

ALW is a series of workshops dedicated to Arabic lettering, with each episode exploring a unique theme. In this episode, Amir will delve into the writing traditions of the Eastern part of the Arabic-scripted world, while Kristyan will focus on its western counterpart.
Through two introductory talks, participants will gain an immersive understanding of the heritage, forms, and mechanics of the Arabic script. They will then have the opportunity to create a lettering piece based on one of the quintessential writing styles from either side—Ruqaa or Nastaliq. A series of guided exercises will allow them to explore the defining characteristics of the Arabic script and its letterforms and manipulate them to create specific expressions.  

* ALW is a project by Khajag Apelian, Wael Morcos, and Kristyan Sarkis. This episode will be hosted in collaboration with Amir Mahdi Moslehi.

Kristyan Sarkis is a type designer and lettering artist, born in Beirut and based in Amsterdam. He has co-founded TPTQ Arabic, a type foundry specializing  in high-quality Arabic fonts, Arabic Type Design - Beirut, the first international educational program dedicated to the subject, and Arabic Lettering Workshops (ALW), a traveling series with 20 episodes to date . He currently teaches at the Type & Media master program (KABK), The Hague. He has worked with clients such as Apple, MoMA, Ford, and the Louvre. His work received numerous awards, including the New York Type Directors Club’s Certificate of Typographic Excellence, ATypI’s Letter.2, and the European Design Award.

Amir Mahdi Moslehi is an Iranian type designer, calligrapher, and researcher based in Hamburg, Germany. He holds a Post-Master’s degree in Typographic Research from the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (Nancy, France) and is pursuing a master’s in Manuscript Culture at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (Hamburg).
His Arabic-script typefaces blend research with calligraphy, distributed by Maryamsoft (Iran) and Rosetta Type Foundry (Czech Republic).

Amir’s work has received multiple awards, including the Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the New York Type Directors Club and Granshan Type Design Prizes.