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Nadine Chahine
Nadine Chahine (in Arabic: نادين شاهين) is a Lebanese type designer working as the CEO at I Love Typography Ltd and the Director at ArabicType Ltd. From 2005 till 2015 she worked as the Arabic Specialist at Linotype and Monotype Imaging and from 2015 to 2018 as the UK Type Director and Legibility Expert at Monotype UK. She designed Arabic versions of the popular typefaces Helvetica, Frutiger, and Zapfino. Her typeface Koufiya was the first to include a simultaneously designed matching Arabic and Latin parts.

Nadine’s work has been featured in the 5th edition of Megg’s History of Graphic Design and in 2012 she was selected by Fast Company as one of its 100 Most Creative People in Business. In 2016 her work was showcased in the 4th edition of First Choice which highlights the work of the 250 top global designers. In 2015, she was selected to design and lead the Dubai Font. In 2017, Nadine was selected by Creative Review to their Creative Leaders 50. Nadine Chahine was selected as one (69th) of the 100 most creative people ranked by Fast Company magazine.

Early Life: How she got into type design
Nadine Chahine grew up in Lebanon, and she says her foremost source of inspiration is still the streets of Beirut. During the 1990s, she studied graphic design at the American University of Beirut, and this is where her passion for type was born—in part due to frustration at the lack of well-designed Arabic typefaces. Nadine's fascination with letterforms began when she studied graphic design, under the guidance of master calligrapher and art critic Samir Sayegh. He instilled in her a respect for type design and showed her how, with a little creativeness, a letterform can change the entire way a message is recognised, interpreted and communicated.

Nadine followed her initial studies with an MA in typeface design at the University of Reading. The course she says gave her the rock solid foundation needed for pursuing a career in type design, especially one that creates designs for foreign languages. Her big break came when she was asked to give a talk at a type conference in Vancouver, where she met the managing director of the well respected type foundry, Linotype. Through this meeting she was offered a six month training opportunity in Germany. The hard work she had put in over the previous years had finally paid off.

Typeface: Dubai
Nadine Chahine: The Executive Council of Dubai approached Monotype to design a custom typeface with both Arabic and Latin components, which would match with each other. The brief they gave us emphasised that the typeface needed to be used in text settings and be highly legible. Nadine was the lead designer on this project. the typeface Dubai was the first time Microsoft has created a font for a city. It was commissioned by the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Nadine talks about her typeface Dubai in an article for Arab News “It’s about the balance between managing to be very modern and cutting-edge in terms of technology and innovation, but at the same time very rooted in Arab history, legacy and heritage. It’s that duality that they wanted to capture. It’s also about the openness and harmony of the city reflected in the typeface. So many different nationalities live in Dubai. There is a cosmopolitan feel to the city.”

Typeface: Sawad
Nadine Chahine released her typeface Sawad, with a text entitled ‘On the outlines of grief’ that tells the story of losing both her parents, most recently her father. An extract from the text reads: ‘In that bleak time I decided to draw, to trace the outlines of my sorrow.' Nadine comments on this typeface that she didn’t know what she would want to do with the design, or what it would look like. And so she drew the Alef, sharp like a knife. The rest of the letterforms followed and the only two conscious design decisions that she had made were how bold the typeface needs to be, and how tiny the counters are. she wanted to draw letterforms that fill my whole screen with black.’

Typeface: Kafa
Kafa was created as a protest against Donald Trump's visit to the UK on July 12, 2018, against the politics of hate and xenophobia. Kafa in Arabic means enough, and this typeface message is to say enough to divisive politics, enough to racism, and enough to lies. Kafa is mostly suited for display and attempts to capture the feelings of anger and protest. It has support for Arabic language and has proportional and tabular figures.