A lot of people have probably never seen the Armenian script. Can you tell us a little about it?
Armenian is fascinating because it's a bit of an historical oddity. It was designed in the 5th Century by the monk Mesrop Mashtots, who was commissioned to preserve Armenian culture in the face of conflicts and invasions, which were commonplace at the time. He probably didn't invent the complete alphabet from scratch, but definitely managed to assemble things in perfect order.
As such, the script is both young and strongly associated with a proud cultural identity. Historical Armenian - with 38 characters and a very interesting form of punctuation - is easy to identify, with its strong vertical stresses and high contrast within and between characters. Sometimes it can even have the feel of a stencil type. However the rigidity is broken gracefully with flowing horizontal or diagonal curves.
The nature of the script brings interesting challenges for designers. A strong feature of the script is the frequent repetition in the uppercase and lowercase of shapes like the u, o, n, and m. These shapes create quite a rigid texture, so spacing and the right proportions are crucial for the design of the Armenian.
How did you approach the design for Nokia Pure Armenian?
At first I had to get familiar with the alphabet. I mean that in the most basic sense: simply learning the names of each letter and how to write each by hand. I then carried out a more in-depth analysis of Armenian typography, and its development over time.
Throughout this period I constantly posed questions to our consultants, type designer and native speaker, Khajag Apelian, and expert in Armenian typography, Carolyn Puzzovio, who were very helpful with their comments and opinions, making sure that I stayed on track.
How did you ensure that the Armenian design worked with the other Pure scripts?
For me, harmonizing different scripts is a matter of staying focused on the overall colour and flavour of the type. This is a delicate balancing act as you need to stay within all the combined, and often conflicting, limits of the typographic conventions that come with each individual script. That's where the art lies - a mechanical repetition of shapes and assignment of proportions simply doesn't work! Each script has its own rules, history and rhythm.
This synthesis is probably the most difficult part of the project. It involves continual testing and comparison. It’s important to us that each script works well with the others in the 'family' so that a clear and unique identity emerges, one that is obvious to everyone who sees it, regardless of whether someone can read that language or not.
What was it like working with mobile phone giants, Nokia?
Funnily enough Nokia are one of the nicest and most patient clients we work with, a perception very much at odds with the idea of a global giant! They gave us the opportunity to learn and explore our design capacity in this area. I like to think that this trust is a continuation from the relationship established early on during the Nokia Pure project.
Did the Armenian script pose any particular problems?
Many challenges, but no problems. To give an example - in Armenian the question, exclamation and emphasis marks are added only on top of the vowels. This is valid for the Uppercase and Lowercase so the position of these characters is above the height of the caps. We thought it would be an improvement to add a stylistic set of question, exclamation and emphasis marks that would fit more with the height of the lowercase, so there would not be a big gap between the lowercase vowels and the punctuation.
Which bit of the design is your favourite?
Type design is often about compromise, and for me this is one of the greatest values of our job. Sacrificing, for example, the nice letter for the best form of all. In the drawings it’s possible to see the problem we were facing with the letter 'now'. This process of selection, testing and verifying is probably my favourite part of the job. The Armenian design is particularly full of this sort of challenge due to the nature of the script.
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