Azza Alameddine: get to know our type designer and engineer
- Date
- April 2018
- Interview with
Go to Azza Alameddine TypeTogetherAzza Alameddine
We first talked with Pooja Saxena, Joancarles Casasín, and Roxane Gataud. Now it is Azza’s turn. Pour yourself a Turkish coffee — it’s time to meet Azza, our type designer and engineer.
Azza Alameddine has been with TypeTogether since July 2016. Originally from Tripoli (Lebanon) and now based in Barcelona (Spain), she splits her time between type and branding design, hoping to bring better typography to the Arab world. Azza is TypeTogether’s quality assurance enforcer and we are fortunate she is our Arabic type design specialist. She likes to collect book covers — both the beautiful and the ugly — and take pictures of bilingual shop signs from around the world. Her favourite foods are Turkish coffee and green plums with salt, and she welcomes discussion about Arabic type design and best practices on Twitter.
In 2023 Roxane move to the US to continue her successful career.
Where is your office located?
In Barcelona, Spain.
In what countries or cities have you lived?
Lebanon, France, Netherlands, England, and Spain.
What kind of music do you listen to, if you do, when working?
I am a big fan of Spotify’s weekly discover which creates a customised playlist according to what you usually listen to. It goes out every Monday and when I’m lazy I listen to it the whole week. Otherwise, I love indie music and I’m a big fan of cover songs.
Can you name three fonts you love (designed by others)?
Meridien by Frutiger, Lyon’s italics by Kai Bernau (Commercial Type), and Domaine (Klim).
Who is your everyday hero?
People who don’t tell you the story of their life on social media. It seems like an accomplishment these days.
What are your love/hate glyphs when designing fonts?
There are so many that I hate. In Arabic I struggle with ‘meem’, ‘hah’, and initial ‘heh’ and all the numerals (okay, all except for zero, which is just a dot). In Latin, the hateful classics: the ‘s’, ‘g’, ‘w’, and all accents. On the other hand, I love to draw ‘seen’, ‘a’, and comma. I bet any non-type-designer reading this must be thinking we are crazy people.
What is your hobby when not designing fonts?
I like to play squash.
You have one opportunity to do something different in your life. What do you choose?
I would go into shoe design or movie score composition.
What is your favourite word?
It’s yacht because no one knows how to pronounce it in any language.
What is the most amazing script you have worked with and why?
I haven’t worked with it yet but I find Sinhalese fascinating because of the complexity of shapes in each glyph.
Azza’s working space in Barcelona.
“This is view of Tripoli’s unfinished international fair from my grandmother’s balcony. An abandoned architectural gem in my hometown, it was designed by Oscar Niemeyer. I love this view and this space so much, I never get tired of it.”
“Arabic lettering on the streets inspire me, especially store signs that are still drawn manually.”
