arabify.iocalligraphy studio

Logo maker

صانع الشعار

Guide

Designing an Arabic logo that works everywhere

A brand mark has a harder job than a poster: it has to stay recognisable at 32 pixels and at three metres, in colour and in flat black. These are the decisions that determine whether an Arabic wordmark survives that range.

Start with the name, not the symbol

The instinct is to pick an icon first. Resist it. In Arabic branding the wordmark carries almost all of the recognition, because the script itself is already a strong visual signature — a well-set Arabic name is distinctive in a way that a Latin name in a common sans is not. Get the name right at a large size, then decide whether a symbol is adding anything or just filling space.

Short names have an enormous advantage here. Two or three words is a logo; a full sentence is a header. If the legal business name is long, set the memorable part as the wordmark and put the rest in the slogan line, where it can sit smaller and quieter.

Which hand to set the wordmark in

This is the single decision that most affects whether the logo works at small sizes. Logo type is not body type — it will be reproduced on a favicon, embroidered on a shirt, and etched into a sign, all of which destroy fine detail.

مَقهى

Reem Kufi ريم كوفي

The default choice for logos. Near-uniform stroke weight and squared geometry mean it holds together at any size and reproduces cleanly in one colour.

مَقهى

Cairo القاهرة

Neutral and modern. Best when the brand is tech, retail or service, and when the mark has to sit next to Latin type.

مَقهى

El Messiri المسيري

A hint of calligraphic contrast without the fragility. Good middle ground for hospitality and lifestyle brands.

مَقهى

Aref Ruqaa عارف رقعة

Traditional and ornate. Beautiful on a café façade or a wedding brand — but check it at small sizes before committing, as the thin strokes drop out.

مَقهى

Lalezar لاله‌زار

Heavy and loud, with maximum presence in a small space. Suits food, entertainment and youth brands that want to shout.

A practical test: set the name, export at 512px, then look at the file thumbnail in your file manager. If you cannot tell what it says, the hand is too delicate for a logo, whatever it looks like on the canvas.

Leave the harakat off

Vocalised text is right for a Qur’anic poster and wrong for a logo. Diacritics add a layer of small marks that break up the silhouette, disappear first when the mark is scaled down, and make the lockup harder to balance. Native readers do not need them on a brand name. Set the wordmark clean and save the harakat for the text studio.

Choosing a lockup

The three arrangements are not interchangeable — each solves a different placement problem.

  • Stacked — symbol above, name below, slogan under that. The most versatile and the closest to a square, which is what social avatars, app icons and stamps want. Use this as your primary mark unless you have a reason not to.
  • Inline — symbol beside the name on one line. Built for horizontal slots: site headers, email signatures, letterheads, the top of an invoice. It is the version you will actually use most on the web, so export it even if Stacked is your primary.
  • Badge — the mark enclosed in a containing shape. Reads as a seal or a stamp, which suits food, craft, heritage and hospitality brands. It is also the most self-contained: because the enclosure defines its own edge, it survives being dropped onto busy photography where the other two lockups get lost.

Real brands ship at least two of these. Build Stacked and Inline from the same name and colours, export both, and use whichever fits the slot — that consistency is most of what a brand system is.

Colour discipline

The studio lets you colour the name, the slogan and the symbol independently. That freedom is a trap. A few constraints that hold up:

  • One accent, maximum. The strongest marks use a single colour, or one colour plus a neutral. Tint the symbol in the accent and set the name in near-black, or invert that — but do not give the name, slogan and symbol three different hues.
  • Make sure it works in one colour. Before you finalise, set everything to a single flat black and look at it. Embroidery, engraving, faxed forms, stamps and single-colour print will all force this on you eventually. If the mark falls apart without colour, the colour was doing the work.
  • Slogans recede. The slogan is supporting information. Set it in a quiet Modern hand at low contrast against the name — if your eye lands on the slogan before the name, the hierarchy is inverted.

Picking a symbol

The symbol picker searches the full Iconify library, which is over 200,000 icons across hundreds of open sets. That breadth is useful and dangerous in equal measure:

  • Prefer filled over outline. Outline icons have thin strokes that vanish at small sizes and clash with a heavy Arabic wordmark. Filled shapes hold their silhouette.
  • Match the weight of the script. A hairline symbol next to a Lalezar wordmark looks like two logos glued together. Aim for similar visual density.
  • Avoid the obvious literal. A coffee cup for a café, a scissors for a salon — these are the icons every competitor has already used. An abstract geometric mark, or a form drawn from Islamic pattern, will age far better.
  • Geometry over illustration. Stars, crescents, arches, tessellations and simple polygons sit naturally with Arabic script because they share its constructed logic. Detailed illustrations do not.

What to export before you finish

Do not download one file and move on. A usable brand kit from this studio is:

  1. Stacked, transparent PNG, 2048px — the master. Every other size comes from this one.
  2. Inline, transparent PNG, 1024px — for the website header and email signature.
  3. Stacked, 512px, on your brand colour — for social avatars, which need an opaque square.
  4. A one-colour version — name, slogan and symbol all set to the same flat black, for print and stamping.

If you want the mark to move — an animated logo sting for a reel or a video intro — the video studio animates the same calligraphy and exports a transparent WebM. For a longer walkthrough of the naming and design process, see our guide on how to create an Arabic logo.

Frequently asked questions

Which export size should I download?

Take 2048px and scale down as needed — you can always shrink a raster logo, never enlarge it. 512px is enough for a favicon, an app icon or a social avatar; 1024px covers websites, email signatures and presentation decks; 2048px is what you want for print, merchandise, signage and any file you hand to a printer or a developer.

Can I use a logo made here for a commercial business?

Yes. The design you compose is yours to use commercially. Note that the calligraphy fonts are open-source Arabic typefaces and the symbols come from Iconify's open icon sets — you are free to use them in a brand mark, but a typeface cannot be exclusively owned by setting words in it, so it does not by itself give you trademark protection. If the mark matters to your business, have a designer redraw the final letterforms into custom outlines and register it.

Why does my logo look blurry when I shrink it?

Almost always too much detail for the size. A Diwani or Nastaliq wordmark carries fine strokes and flourishes that vanish below about 64px, and a thin outline symbol disappears with them. Test your mark at favicon size early: if it stops being legible, switch the wordmark to Kufic or a Modern hand and pick a filled symbol rather than an outline one.

Do I need a symbol at all?

No, and many of the strongest Arabic marks do not have one. The script is already distinctive enough to carry a brand on its own. Add a symbol when the name is short and needs visual weight, when you need a standalone icon for app tiles and avatars, or when the business category is not obvious from the name. If the wordmark already looks complete, leaving the symbol off is the better call.

Should the logo be transparent or have a background?

Export the transparent PNG as your master file — it drops onto any surface, light or dark. Produce coloured-ground versions only for specific placements where you need the mark to hold its own box, such as a social avatar or a sticker. A brand that only has a logo on one fixed background runs into trouble the first time it appears somewhere else.

Can I put Latin text in the wordmark?

The studio is built around Arabic type, and the fonts are Arabic-first. Latin characters will render, but the pairing is unlikely to be balanced — Arabic and Latin have different vertical proportions, and matching them properly is a design job of its own. For a bilingual mark, export the Arabic wordmark as a transparent PNG and set the Latin half in your own design tool alongside it.