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I love the aesthetic as well.

I’m curious, how readable is this to a native Arabic reader? Is it easy to read fluently or does it take some processing?




Square Kufic is easy to read for native readers when you add diacritical marks and keep the general order along a path. You'll often see words or phrases repeated or flipped to make cool geometric designs, which is easy to spot for native readers but often confusing for others.

The Reem Kufi font [0] is even easier to read and rather popular on trendy Arabic websites and publications.

[0] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Reem+Kufi


I see that font a lot at arabic restaurants here in LA.


What is the relation between the square font and Reem Kufi?


The pixelated font is called square kufic. Kufic script in general is very angular as opposed to flowing, think monospace font vs cursive. You see this in classical mosaics as well as modern decorated buildings, having the straight/right-angle thing going on is either more complementary for being part of the architecture or is a material constraint of having square tile to work with or trying to make sure you're applying the text to the building in a way that is "plumb square".

So Reem Kufic is a modern font that has the same goal as the classical, square kind.


Not a native reader, using my acquired reading knolwdge. It takes a lot of processing for me, no idea where to start, had to look for each letter and still couldn't find a few. So great as a design, quite poor for readability.


Reading is like a solving a puzzle. Definitely not easy.


I have no idea what it says, I can tell it is arabic but no idea where to start reading


I'm a native reader, was never able to understand it




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