Rakkas

Try Rakkas

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Rakkas Regular

About Rakkas

Rakkas is a display typeface that covers the Arabic and Latin scripts in one heavy weight. The official description traces the Arabic to Ruq'ah lettering seen on Egyptian cinema posters of the 1950s and 60s. Contextual alternates give many Arabic letters different shapes depending on position, and words step downward as they are set, imitating calligraphy. The Latin is described as blackletter loosened into something informal. In the specimen it shows thick strokes with strong thick-to-thin contrast, wedge-shaped serifs, slanted terminals and broken strokes in k and g. The family is one static Regular file with 912 glyphs across Arabic, Latin and Latin Extended character sets. There is no bold, italic or variable version. Zeynep Akay, who works in London as a type designer, leads the project.

Where Rakkas works

Arabic film and event posters

The Arabic comes from poster lettering, and its cascading words fill a title area the way hand lettering does.

Bilingual titles

Arabic and Latin share one heavy weight and one style, so a title in both scripts holds together.

Covers and packaging with a period feel

The 1950s and 60s poster source suits book covers, record sleeves and labels that call for a retro tone.

Short Latin headlines

Wedge serifs and broken strokes give a few Latin words a calligraphic, blackletter-tinged look.

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
• Polish
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Slovenian
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian

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, latin-ext. 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 Rakkas

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

body {
  font-family: "Rakkas", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Rakkas 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=Rakkas&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

One weight only

Rakkas has a single Regular style. There is no lighter or bolder companion and no italic.

Arabic shapes depend on OpenType features

The position-dependent Arabic forms are contextual alternates, so they appear only where OpenType shaping is active.

Two copyright lines

The license notice reads Copyright 2016 Zeynep Akay, while the font's name table names The Rakkas Project Authors.

FAQs

Similar fonts

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