Otta Arabic
Pampatype · Francisco Gálvez Pizarro · 2015
A hand-drawn, humanist multi-script family by Francisco Gálvez Pizarro, designed to harmonise Arabic and Latin on the same page through shared horizontal contrast.
About
Originally designed to typeset Gálvez Pizarro's own book on typography, Otta Arabic draws on calligraphic tradition to create an organic rhythm suited to continuous reading. The family spans seven styles from Light to Display Black, covering Arabic (with Persian, Urdu and ligatures) alongside an unusually complete Latin that extends to IPA, Pan-African scripts, Pinyin and Vietnamese. Horizontal contrast, a feature native to both Arabic and Greek writing traditions, ties the scripts together into a coherent visual system.
Classification
Otta Arabic is a humanist multi-script family with calligraphic roots, designed around horizontal contrast — a tradition shared by Arabic and Greek scripts. The hand-drawn quality and organic rhythm place it firmly in the humanist category.