"Many submissions came with messages of support to the people of Beirut."Įsteemed designers from the Arab world, including Mamoun Sakkal, Khajag Apelian, Yara Khoury and Wael Morcos, were among the contributors. "I was shocked by the amount of empathy," she says. The collaborative nature of the Li Beirut font fundraiser has been a unique experience for Chahine, who says she never expected this many designers to contribute so promptly. That quick response could also, perhaps, explain the number of creatives who came on board. Previously, the Society of Typographic Aficionados organised eight iterations of Font Aid, a charity drive that responded to a number of global tragedies, including the Nepalese earthquake in 2015 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
This is not the first time typeface designers have come together to create a font to raise funds. "I lived the first 11 years of my life during the civil war and I've never seen Lebanon in such a dire state."ĭrawn by designers worldwide, Font Li Beirut aims to fundraise for victims of the Beirut blast. When you consider the liquidity problems. But when you add an economic crisis, a pandemic and a political crisis, when you consider the fact that people are unable to access their own money in the bank. "Even outside the context of everything that's going on, the explosion is a traumatic event. Nadine Chahine is the designer famous for leading the team behind the Dubai Font. The blast, Chahine says, marks a collective trauma for the Lebanese people, who are already facing an economic crisis as a result of years of corruption within the government. The font, which includes 300 decorative glyphs of isolated Arabic characters and Latin capital letters, was commissioned by Nadine Chahine, the lead designer behind the popular Dubai Font, days after the explosion that rocked Beirut's port on August 4. More than 160 regional and international designers have rallied to create a new typeface, Li Beirut, which is helping to raise funds for the people of Beirut.