Morning Prayer - Type Design: Type Architect

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The brief requires us to create a beautifully designed typeface based on South African architecture as well as create a brochure and posters to display and sell it to a target audience. The limitations set were that we had to choose only between serif or sans serif classifications, the typeface must be legible as body copy text and at small sizes and it must include A-Z in uppercase and a-z in lowercase letters as well as numbers and glyphs. The Morning Prayer typeface was created with the purpose and intention of having an old-school yet classy and well crafted aesthetic which fit that of the building itself.

Masjid Siratul-Jannah

Masjid Siratul-Jannah, also known as the “Ferrero Mosque” due to the brown and gold colour scheme of the mosque resembling that of the Ferrero Rocher packaging, is a beautifully designed mosque built in an Ottoman/Fatimid architectural style with magnificent arches, columns, domes and minarets. There are gorgeous patterns inscribed in and ouside of each and every dome, as well as on the ceiling, pillars, walls, furniture, chandeliers, skirtings, doors and marbel floors. It is located in Evans Park, Ormonde and has prayer and wudhu (ritual washing to be performed in preparation for prayer and worship) facilities as well as bathrooms for both men and women. It also contains a number of classrooms which are used for Madrassah (school for Islamic knowledge).

The grids that I created in order to design the Morning prayer typeface are based on the picture above. The picture is of the huge chandelier that hangs in the main section of the mosque along with the interior of the three main domes of the mosque. This picture provided circles and semi-circles which i used for bowls and curvature of the letters. Another huge contribution to these grids was the shape of the arches (see p.18 of the brochure) which I used to form the serifs of most letters as well as the numbers, glyphs the tail of the capital Q and the middle of the lowercase g. These arches are also prevalent in letters such as’E’, ‘F’, ‘K’ a ‘X’, The image was taken while laying on the floor as the chandelier and domes are simply too big to capture without doing that, even with a wide angle.