Omid Nemalhabib Work
Omid Nemalhabib is a graphic designer working at the intersection of type design, visual language, and multilingual typography. He draws on philosophy, visual culture, poetry, and practice-led artistic research to build multilayered narratives, shaped into typographic systems through an ongoing dialogue between analogue tools and digital experimentation. This cross-disciplinary approach spans identity, editorial, printed objects, web design, and motion. He co-founded Studio Melli, an independent practice born in Tehran and based in The Hague.
Shekanj Type Specimen
2025Shekanj is a Nastaliq-based typeface for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu designed by Amir Mahdi Moslehi under Kristyan Sarkis at Typotheque Arabic, built on the idea of shekanj, the folds and texture that appear as Nastaliq's diagonal flow meets a horizontal baseline. Rather than a conventional type specimen, the presentation takes the form of a typographic essay, treating the typeface as a narrative system shaped by history, script politics, and the tension between calligraphic tradition and digital standardization.
               The essay and full visual content, text, structure, and typographic direction, were written and designed to move through this history, how print and later digitization reshaped Perso-Arabic scripts, and how writing itself becomes a political act when a script resists the tools built to standardize it. Rooted in critical theory and the shared visual culture of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, the specimen presents Shekanj not as a finished object, but as a living inquiry into script, form, and resistance.

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