In the framework of 'The Labyrinth of the Scripts' two lectures were held:
First, Egyptologist / Assyriologist Uzume Wijnsma will talk about the relationship between writing and power from her own research period with a parallel to the present: the Persian Empire knew a vast amount of languages and scripts, with various functions. For example, the Persians (founders of the first world empire, 539-330 BC) began the tradition of trilingual inscriptions to indicate the variety of their peoples: a powershow in ancient times, in which script was used as a symbol of domination.
Huda Abi Farès (founder of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography) initiated ‘Typographic Matchmaking in the Maghreb’, a typographic research project, in which teams of designers developed trilingual font families that harmoniously combine the Arabic, Tifinagh and Latin scripts. Although they contain an enormous wealth of aesthetic variation and expressive capabilities, both the Maghribi writing style and the Berber Tifinagh script have never been thoroughly investigated in contemporary (digital) typedesign.