Dubai: The city of Dubai is home to many unique projects; a seven-star hotel, the world’s tallest building, and now – the alphabet.
The alphabet typed in the Dubai Font, to be precise.
Giant letters of the Arabic and English alphabet have been making appearance in pockets of the city, and have been spotted along Shaikh Zayed Road, Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Boulevard, Dubai Mall and Kite Beach, in addition to other main roads and streets in Dubai.
The Dubai Font mirrors the city’s qualities and promotes its global standing, and includes 23 languages.
According to organisers, this unique initiative serves as a reminder of the core values that characterise the city of Dubai: happiness, giving, respect, tolerance, modernity, smartness and living in harmony.
“The Dubai Font is not only a digital medium for expression and reading, it is also a means of communication combining the ancient and honourable past of the Emirates to its modern present and the aspirations of its brilliant future,” said Engineer Ahmad Al Mahri, assistant secretary general for the Executive Council and General Secretariat Affairs Sector of Dubai, and Project Director of Dubai Font.
The Dubai Font was the first font created by and named after a city, and developed in collaboration with Microsoft.
The unique font was launched in April 2017 by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai.
Organisers have described the Dubai Font as one that, “fills a design gap between Arabic and Latin texts and presents harmonious typefaces combining the two scripts seamlessly.”
The font is available for all of the 100 million users of Microsoft’s Office 365 software, and can be downloaded in multiple formats or Windows, Android and Mac OS software.
To download the font, visit www.dubaifont.com.
The Dubai Font also its own accounts on Twitter and Instagram under the username @DubaiFont, where residents can also share their ideas and opinions on social media through the hashtag #Expressyou.