Gulzar

Try Gulzar

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Gulzar Regular

About Gulzar

Gulzar is a typeface for the Urdu language in the Nasta'liq style of the Arabic script, issued together with a Latin serif drawn to accompany it. The official description sets out its aim as readable text for long passages on screens and in print, and says the Nasta'liq forms were modelled on collected examples of Urdu calligraphy and lettering. The specimen on this page shows the Latin side: a serif with sharp, wedge-shaped serifs, clear contrast between thick and thin strokes, and classical book proportions. Borna Izadpanah led the project as principal designer, Alice Savoie drew the Latin, Simon Cozens engineered the fonts and Fiona Ross acted as consultant. Gulzar has one Regular style with 1,161 glyphs behind 414 encoded characters, and it is not a variable font. It is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Where Gulzar works

Urdu text in print and on screens

The project's stated goal is a Nasta'liq that stays legible at text sizes, for articles and books rather than titles alone.

Bilingual Urdu and English pages

The Latin was designed for this Nasta'liq, with contrast that echoes it, so both scripts can sit in one paragraph without a second family.

Transliterated names and terms

The official notes say the Latin carries the transliteration characters used to transcribe Arabic, Persian and Urdu.

Headings in a classical serif

Used alone, the Latin gives titles sharp serifs and strong stroke contrast.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Arabic. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: arabic, latin. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with Gulzar

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Gulzar on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Gulzar";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/Gulzar-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Gulzar", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Gulzar with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Gulzar&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

One weight

Gulzar has a single Regular style. There is no bold or italic.

The specimen shows Latin only

The sample image on this page sets the Latin alphabet. The Arabic-script glyphs, the larger part of the 1,161, are not pictured there.

Latin Extended is partial

The font is listed with the Arabic and Latin subsets. Latin Extended is only partly present and is not counted as covered.

FAQs

Collections with Gulzar

• Fonts that support Arabic

  Open-license families for the Arabic script with a matching Latin: Naskh text faces, Kufi-based sans-serifs and display designs.

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All serif fonts