ExCLUSIVE: THE MAN WHO DESIGNED THE FIRST ARABIC FONTS FOR MAC
Back in the 1980s, Dr Al-Assam worked on a secret project for this company you’ve probably heard of. Ali says there are things Steve Jobs was spot on about, like fonts
Ali is for Apple. He designed the first Arabic fonts for the Mac
We were worried to start with. That we wouldn’t be able to locate the man who developed four Arabic fonts still in the Apple library for Mac back in the day — in the ’80s, when the Mac was unheard of, a top secret mission — let alone ambush the creator of Arabic typefaces (fonts?) Geeza, Kufi, Damascus, Baghdad — and ask him a couple of questions.
At an event called WAN IFRA (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishing) at a hotel by the water in Dubai last week, there must have been plenty of folks trying to nab him. Turned out, Dr Ali Al Assam (managing director of KnowledgeView Ltd) was easy enough to nab, and even willing to forego his coffee break to have a chat. And so, we headed to a round table with lunch places laid out. Moving aside cutlery and serviettes shaped like standing triangles, Dr Ali began telling the story of his association with Apple, the time he met Steve Jobs, the early days of graphics, and what to his mind, is the next big revolution in technology.
Can you talk about the beginning? How did your dealings with Apple start?
We developed Arabic for Apple 2 and Apple made a deal with us — they would distribute our Arabisation kit in the Middle East from 1982 to ’84. In the Middle East, there was virtually no Arabic on computers. It was very early days — there were no graphics…
This was 1984?
Apple called me in... yes, I think, it was 1984. They said, we have a secret project in America. Will you come and help us with it? I was based in London then. So I went there. This is where I met Steve Jobs briefly. They had a secret project in another building. We didn’t know how it looked. Apple had a Lisa (computer) that had a mouse and graphics. The Mac was a small box. But we had simulation on it. And they said, we’d like your help with doing fonts on this Mac in Arabic. They were producing all the Eastern fonts. Apple was the first US manufacturer… (It was the) vision of Steve Jobs to say, look we are international, it has to be Kanji, Indian, Chinese, Arabic, and it all must look really beautiful... characters appeared in green, very ugly, very small, no graphics, on a black screen. That was a reality then. So, what he was producing was really revolutionary. Now you could see fantastic type on the screen...
How many fonts did you work on for the Mac? And how long did it take?
When they were releasing this Mac in the Arabic world, they wanted an application on it to develop four fonts. I stayed with them for a few weeks in Cupertino in the headquarters... kept coming and going between London and Cupertino… I must have gone a year before that, actually. 1983. We launched it near Tower Bridge in a hotel together.
They launched the Mac and we launched our desktop software on it. It was a joint launch between us an Apple. We did four fonts. Geeza, the application font is now on every iPhone. We did Geeza, Kufi, Damascus and Baghdad. To do the fonts, the first one took two months. Geeza took two months, and the others took another few months each. But within the first year there were all there. Apple licensed it from us, for a very small price. It was fantastic then. Only a few thousand for it.
Do you feel bad? At the small price?
(laughs) Well, of course. But not really, that’s life. When they produced the iPhone and Apple and other devices, all the fonts were all there.
And back then, did you imagine the company (Apple) would become so big?
No, of course not. We were Apple fans, and Apple had its fans (even then). During Steve Jobs’s time, it was like a religion. People were really mad about anything that came from Apple. Nobody imagined there would be an Internet. Nobody thought there would be billions of Macs.
And your font, it’s still there. So it’s been timeless ?
Yes, timeless. The font is in vector, standard. It’s still there. Probably Apple I’m sure has tweaked it technically but they haven’t changed its look. It looks exactly the same.
You met Steve Jobs. What was that like?
Oh. It was for (a) few minutes only.
Was he wearing a black sweater?
No, that came later. He had long hair then.
So nothing that stands out?
No, not really. Someone introduced us. We met like oi, oi, this is Steve Jobs, this is Ali, he’s doing Arabic fonts, oh yes, hello how are you, and you move along. When the Mac came out, I didn’t see him after that.
What happened after Steve Jobs left?
For one, Microsoft became big. Steve Jobs was evicted from Apple and Apple started going down. Industry observers were saying, ‘when is Apple going to disappear?’ They were counting the days for it to go bankrupt. Then they called Steve back and he revived it again with his genius and so on.
How do you think Apple is doing under Tim Cook?
It’s doing quite well. Some people say Steve Jobs’s innovations have a five-years span. You don’t know where the next revolution is going to be. People would say he’s dictatorial and so on, but he wasn’t. I mean, he was tough. But he managed to create a management class, a culture of innovation. And that management class continued to succeed when he was gone. He allowed a company to be innovative. You need a different type of leadership (for that).
Your prediction for the next big innovation?
In the next two years, there’s going to be the next big innovation. Just follow Apple’s patents, then you can take a guess. Whether it has Steve Jobs’s vision, you don’t know. He was really quite visionary. He said the iPad would never be important. And his focus was in the iPhone. And then the iPad became very important. He said he would never do a big screen like the iPad, but tablets are going down.
Is smartphone reading going to have an impact on fonts? Are we going to see more Sans Serif?
People are going to appreciate (fonts) more, absolutely. The technology for display has improved. It’s given the designer much more freedom.
Do fonts tell the story of culture?
Absolutely, yes. Yes.
How much does culture influence fonts?
A lot. Islamic culture had a tremendous influence on fonts. It tells a story. People in the old days weren’t allowed to have pictures and drawings. So to express beauty, you expressed it in fonts. It’s a way of expressing things you couldn’t express otherwise.
You’re saying probably Arabic has more reflection of culture than the Roman fonts, the Latin fonts.
Not necessarily. We don’t know about other cultures. But if you look at the Chinese and the Kanji and so on, their glyphs are very beautiful... they do more with fonts than Arabic, different approaches.
Can fonts get people back to reading?
It can. Yes. It’s only the beginning. Very important question, this...
Islamic culture had a tremendous influence on fonts... In the old days, you weren’t allowed to have pictures. To express beauty, you expressed it in fonts. It’s a way of expressing things you couldn’t express otherwise.