Karim Farah in Conversation With Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès

Huda AbiFarès interviews Karim Farah about his graphic design and Arabic lettering work. The interview explores the potential of music in Karim’s development of his unique visual language in which he questions the aesthetics of the Kufi style, abstracting it to extract a specific meaning out of compositions, while pushing the legibility of the letters as far they can go before losing recognizabilty, and challenging the reader to ‘read’ them as form and not as linguistic signs.

***** About Khatt Chronicles *****

Khatt Chronicles podcast features remarkable designers, illustrators, and researchers from the Arab World. We host engaging conversations about their practice, vision, and aspirations. In line with the rest of the Khatt foundation projects, focuses on new developments with Arab typography and design. By Arab, we mean people working with the Arabic language, script, and audience, who are not necessarily Arabs. These initiatives are dedicated to the younger generation as an alternative medium. It also focuses on the younger generations of designers to fulfill three primary objectives:

1. Promote designers in the Arab World to the region and the rest of the world.
2. Continue the mission of Khatt foundation as a network between designers to support fostering and exploring new ideas.
3. Present these podcasts for inspiration and educational reasons.

The podcast is an ongoing platform covering design initiatives and developments around the world. Our aim is to identify and highlight designers from the Arab World that have made meaningful contributions in their fields or have demonstrated excellence in design.

Through storytelling, the Khatt Chronicles podcast will get you to know the designers on a personal level, and get to learn about how they think, and what makes them tick.

Khatt Chronicles podcast is in collaboration with afikra.

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***** About afikra *****

afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity. Read more about us on afikra.com