Farah Fayyad | Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics | V&A

Farah Fayyad is a Lebanese graphic designer fascinated by Arabic calligraphy and lettering. She was shortlisted for the V&A’s Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics in 2021.

In this short film, Farah describes the genesis of her typeface Kufur, a contemporary Arabic font based on the historic Kufic calligraphic style. Kufur retains and reimagines many features of original, traditional Kufic and adapts these for digital use. Gestures or decisions that would be made by hand by the calligrapher have been innovatively encoded into the typeface.

Farah is equally passionate about screen-printing, and runs a small press in Beirut. The film opens with footage from October 2019, when popular uprisings began across Lebanon. Fayyad and her colleague Siwar Kraytem installed a manual screen-printing press at the heart of the Beirut protests. They printed political slogans in Arabic and artworks by local designers onto protestors’ clothes, free of charge and on the spot, using design and typography as a mode of political engagement in public space.

Find out more about the Jameel Prize: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/jameel-prize-poetry-to-politics

Vote for your favourite shortlisted artist from this year’s Jameel Prize: https://jameel-prize.vam.ac.uk/entry/vote/kogmjJYg