The Elegant Lightness of Arabic Calligraph.

The Al Maha/Oryx logotype carries the seeds of tradition transformed to meet the needs of contemporary branding design from the Arab
world. It gracefully brings together the Arabic and Western scripts in a final harmonious cadence of the emblematic image.

Under the creative direction of Qatar Airways, primacy was given to handwritten Arabic calligraphy with the English name and font secondary in hierarchy. Pascal Zoghbi’s design, which was chosen for the final logo, is representative of how the designers’ approach offers an insight into how the Arabic script can be used.

Zoghbi proposed two directions: one using traditional fluid calligraphy as a starting point, the second using modern Kufic letters. The latter approach proved too rigid and was dropped early on in the process. In his early sketches, Zoghbi tried to incorporate the image of the oryx’s head either by adding an illustration, or by twisting the letters to form this image (a well-known old Arabic calligraphy trick). Later he reverted to a more abstract calligraphic approach using the ‘heh’ (Arabic letter H) in the ‘Al Maha’ word to experiment with different forms and ways of linking it to the letters before and after it. After the rough sketching phase, Zoghbi consulted the Lebanese calligrapher Ali Assi for guidance from a seasoned and professional viewpoint. Zoghbi and Assi conducted several trials in various calligraphic styles, such as Naskh, Thuluth, Diwani, and Ruqaa, finally settling on the Diwani style.