Sudani Typeface

About the project

Sudani Typeface is a font that emulates the Timbuktu (or Sudanese) script from the Western Sudan region, traditionally used in the writing of Qur’ans in that area. Driven by a desire to revive this elegant Arabic script, I learned to write it, digitized it, and transformed it into a typeface. Sudani Typeface is thick and rigid, characterized by its bold, dark black appearance, which creates a striking contrast with ascending letters. There is no specific alignment in the lengths of the letters on the baseline, and it shares similarities with the Kairouan script in its letterforms, which vary between precision and thickness. In the Sudanese typographic font, typographic principles were carefully considered, including the merging of black shapes, letter lengths, letterform construction, diacritic placement, and consistency of angles and curves. Solutions were developed to address these aspects, with the letterforms based on the Qur’an transcribed by the calligrapher Al-Quni Al-Sanusi Muhammad Omar Naqal.