ARAVRIT

Copyright ©Aravrit, by Liron Lavi Turkenich

Liron Lavi Turkenich is a design entrepreneur, typeface designer, and researcher based in Israel. She studied both in Israel and in the UK and is highly interested in multilingual typeface design and specialises in Hebrew and Amharic. Liron is very involved in the typeface design community and is running a mentorship program on the global Alphabets network. Among all her projects she is also the creator of an experimental writing system called Aravrit, a new hybrid system that merges two languagesHebrew and Arabic. Her writing system received wide global recognition.

This Zene will focus on Liron’s journey to create this writing system, what led to the creation of the design, the challenges faced and the outcome that is still, and perhaps will always be a continuing and evolving process.

Feature Article

The writing system Aravrit is more than just a typeface. The reason it was created, and its features are a symbol of something much deeper. Aravrit is a hybrid of the words ‘Ivrit’ and ‘Aravit’ which means Hebrew and Arabic.

In Israel’s signage system, most signs are written in three languages- Hebrew, Arabic and English. Most signs show a hierarchy that prioritises Hebrew, and then Arabic and English. Aravrit began to develop when the designer Liron Lavi Turkenich, who’s a native Hebrew speaker, noticed that she is automatically ignoring Arabic on the signage.

Liron comes from a multicultural city where people who speak Hebrew and Arabic live together, and she decided she cannot ignore Arabic anymore. Ignoring Arabic symbolises the ignorance of people who live on the same land, same city, but speak a different language. That is what was going to define her design problem. She wants to end ignorance, to “connect between two parallel lines”.

Then, comes the research stage. She had a clear goal, and after research, she found that the answer to the problem is that Arabic, like Latin, can be legible when only the top part of the word is visible, and Hebrew, in opposition, can be read even when only the bottom part is visible. That concept formed the decision to merge them top and bottom.

So Liron found her system. Each Hebrew letter will sit on the bottom of the Arabic one. But, as Liron doesn’t speak Arabic, she had to contact a typeface designer from Lebanon, who help her with each letter and each word to make sure they are legible in both Arabic and Hebrew. Together, they discuss the variations and try to find a solution.

The Hebrew Alphabet contains 22 letters, and Arabic has 28. This means Liron had to merge each Hebrew letter with each Arabic letter to be able to write words. This led to the creation of 638 letters!

But the process does not end here. The typeface is unlike any other typeface you can type on the computer. Because it combines two languages with completely different structures, Hebrew letters are square shaped like blocks, and Arabic is flowing and connected, Liron is precisely designing words for requests.

As this concept began to develop, Liron had to test it and see if this idea can work as she hoped. She was asking strangers in public spaces for their opinion, both Arabic and Hebrew speakers. As a conversation started, different people joined the conversation. That created an open discussion and a safe space of interaction for people who live together but do not normally interact. This was when Liron felt that the “parallel lines are no longer parallel”.