Awan

Awan was a daily forward-thinking newspaper based in Kuwait, that was briefly published from November 2007 to May 2010, with an average circulation of 15.000 copies.

For the launch of Awan the global brand consultancy Fitch was engaged and associate design director in their Qatar branch, Anis Bengiuma wanted to have a new, custom typeface designed for the headlines. He conducted a search among known Arabic type designers, and selected Sakkal Design for this project.

The brief identified the look of the new typeface as modern, professional, prestigious, and reliable. It needed to be legible as a newspaper typeface, with low contrast and geometric forms to distinguish it from typical Arabic newspapers headlines fonts that have exaggerated baseline stokes. Working closely with the client’s design team, the Awan typeface was produced in two weights in a short time schedule.

The typeface was used for the newspaper headlines, usually in bold weight, and sub-heads and article titles, usually in light weight. With its novel and clean letterforms, the new typeface immediately distinguished the newspaper as a young and progressive periodical.

During the years of publication, Awan was an exclusive design for the newspaper. When the paper closed in 2010, the family was expanded to seven weights, a second typeface, Zaman, was introduced, adding calligraphic Naskh details, thus making it into a versatile tool, and a companion Latin was designed later by Juliet Shen. It became AwanZaman, and now released by TypeTogether.