The Joy of Other Cultures
Probably my love for Middle Eastern art came from reading The Alchemist, learning about calligraphy, playing the Prince of Persia video games, and watching all three seasons of Avatar in a matter of weeks. Last week I even read an article about non-Latin writing systems that made my heart melt. Even though the Latin alphabet is beautiful and can be transformed into so many typefaces, it seems almost boring compared to the beautiful slashes and swirls of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Brahmic alphabets (if you can even call them alphabets).
That’s why today I made a drop cap that was inspired by Arabic writing. If you have noticed, I actually skipped the O in my alphabet to use a letter that could take advantage of the Arabic calligraphy. I’m quite proud of my P, except for the fact that it doesn’t work as a drop cap too well. It’s more of a tattoo than a communication tool.
My friend and old room mate once learned how to write in Arabic over a summer. He didn’t learn it perfectly because he just translated each character to the English equivalent and then wrote English sentences but with Arabic characters. It was more of a code than a translation. You could almost say that my letter is a visual representation of what he did. Hope you enjoy.
Very nice but what is the meaning ?