Nadine Chahine was born in Beirut, she graduated from the American University of Beirut with a BGD degree in Graphic Design in 2000. It was during that formative period that she became interested in Arabic Typography, under the supervision of calligrapher, historian, and art critic Samir Sayegh. After practicing as a freelance designer in Beirut, she resumed her post-graduate studies and earned a degree from the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading in 2003, where she studied under renowned type designers such as Gerard Unger and Jean-François Porchez. She lectures regularly on Arabic type design issues at international conferences around the world. She has taught Arabic Type design and typography courses at the Lebanese American University (in Beirut) and at the American University in Dubai. She currently works at Linotype GmbH, in Germany, as Arabic specialist developing custom Arabic fonts for various international clients. She is an independent type designer. Her typefaces to date are ‘Koufiya’ (a dual-script font family, Latin and Arabic) that started off as her MA thesis project at the University of Reading and has been developed further since, Arabic versions of renowned Latin typefaces, such as Frutiger Arabic and Palatino Arabic, and original Arabic fonts, such as ‘Janna’ and ‘Badiya’. Her fonts are published by Linotype GmbH and further information about her work can be seen on her website: www.arabictype.com.
Cairo font?
So, Cairo was the first Arabic city who owned an Arabic font?
