Design Concept
Identitet (Croatian for identity) is a typeface system of six different writing scripts (Angular Glagolitic, Round Glagolitic, Croatian Cyrillic (Bosančica), Cyrillic, Arebica and Latin) designed to work together as a unified whole by harmonising their visual parameters. Line thickness, x-height, upper case height and other elements have been tuned for optimal compatibility even when setting vastly differing scripts.
Over the past thousand years these scripts have all been used in the Balkan region. The languages of this region share a common phonetic structure, which each of these scripts complements well. Aside from Arebica, which is derived from Arabic script and written right-to-left, all the other scripts are written left-to-right.
Arebica
The most unexpected script in this collection is Arebica, a localised version of the hybrid script that appeared in Bosnia sometime in the 15th century under the influence of the Ottoman empire. The letterforms were taken from the Arabic, but they were used to represent local sounds, making it a very interesting combination of the region’s Latin and Slavic heritages with the Arabic way of writing. Although the name and visual representation are similar, Arebica should not in any way be considered an Arabic script and is used only for the Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin languages.
User Chart
Download the complete overview of how sounds used in Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin can be written in these scripts. For more information about Identitet and the research that lead to the design of this typeface, see the Identitet book.
Author
Designed by Nikola Djurek. Arebica designed with Hasan Abu Afash. Thanks to Robert Čanak for help with Arebica, Amra Zulfikarpašić for help with Bosančica (Croatian Cyrillic), and Ilya Ruderman for help with Cyrillic. Special thanks to Marija Juza co-author of Balkan type system.
