There are different reasons for using a lightweight WordPress theme for a website. Whether you don’t have enough space on your host or you need an amazing page loading speed, a lightweight theme can help you to achieve your goals.
These kinds of themes can save space on your server allocation and make your website faster. A faster loading speed provides a better user experience, improves SEO, and makes you able to attract more visitors to your site. It’s broadly accepted that over half of users will leave your website after spending 3 seconds waiting to load a page.
So let’s briefly review the features and qualities of lightweight WordPress themes, and find out what a lightweight theme is?
What is a Lightweight WordPress Theme?
In short, it is all about the file sizes and coding quality. Lightweight themes are often very simple, clean, and minimalistic. Simpler code, less complexity, and smaller file sizes will result in better performance and help your website to load faster.
Loading heavy images, gifs, and videos will slow your website down, but once a page is loading in the browser, unprofessional JavaScript and CSS coding (in your WordPress theme), can also increase the numbers of HTTP requests made to the server, slow rendering of the page, and ultimately slow down your site.
So a lightweight theme for your website is a clean, well-developed, and low-size WordPress theme.
How to Find a Lightweight and Fast-Loading WordPress Theme
There are countless numbers of templates for WordPress available on Envato Market. ThemeForest is a huge online market that lets you find, review, and download your desired WordPress themes. ThemeForest includes all details (and a live preview) for each theme and helps you choose a theme armed with more information and confidence.
If you are interested in subscription plans and want access to more items with a single purchase, then you can use the most useful source for web designers and developers – Envato Elements. Using Envato Elements you’ll access all necessary digital goods like templates, stock images, videos, fonts, and more.
In this post, I have collected the best lightweight themes available on ThemeForest and Envato Elements that you can use for different goals and purposes. I will also provide you some awesome free lightweight themes from the WordPress repository.
Best Lightweight WordPress Themes on ThemeForest
Now let’s get started with the first lightweight WordPress theme in this list.
Veen is an elegant and search-engine-optimized theme for WordPress that allows you to improve your rank in Google. It has a lightweight file size on a fresh install and can get an unbelievable score (A-100%) on GTmetrix. This lightweight theme is fully responsive, comes with 6 ready-to-use layouts for the home page, and looks nice on all screen sizes.
Klambi is a really fast and light theme for WordPress. It comes with beautiful hover effects and images but as it is a well-coded theme, it won’t slow down the functionality of your website. Loading speed is an important feature for an online store and it can create a very good experience for the customers and increase sales. That’s why you need a lightweight WooCommerce-integrated theme for your website.
If you want to build a WooCommerce website and want more options (themes) to choose from, then take a look at the articles below to find more WooCommerce themes.
If you’re looking for a fast and clean theme for your news website, this lightweight WordPress theme could be an excellent choice for you. It is specially designed for news portals and developed with the best coding skills to bring you a fast page loading speed. The DW Focus WordPress theme comes with useful features for a news website like news sliders, quick tabs, mega menus, and more.
Galway is a lightweight and fast-loading WordPress theme for blogs and online magazines. It comes with 3 different homepages and lets you create multiple sliders for any use cases. Briefly, it is a simple and search engine optimized theme and is suitable for those who want to build a fast website in the shortest possible time.
Crux includes a unique slider builder (save $15) and a helpful control panel that allows you to customize your website in a simple environment. This WooCommerce lightweight theme provides you additional widgets, and with its Stag tools, allows you to use custom shortcodes on the website. Crux is also fully compatible with WooCommerce plugin so if you are planning to create an online store, this lightweight WordPress theme is what you need.
Are you planning to create a portfolio website for your business? Do you need a fast portfolio theme with a lightweight size? If yes, take a look at the live preview of Portfolio Air on ThemeForest. It is a minimalist, lightweight, and search engine optimized WordPress theme that comes with 2 header styles, a customizable footer, various portfolio lists, 6 different project layouts, and more.
This one is a simple minimalist WordPress theme that gives you a simple website with a clean environment and helps you to build an eye-catching portfolio in minutes.
“It’s created around a content first concept and an amazing portfolio grid. It’s also packed with a lot of useful features, options, and shortcodes to offer the best solution for any type of website you’d like to create.”
If you’re interested in using a minimalistic WordPress theme for your website or want to find more minimalist themes, then feel free to read the articles below.
Rein is a lightweight WordPress theme with a dark fantasy background that is suitable for almost any blog and online magazine. It is a perfectly-developed theme with a fast loading speed, quality coding, and has a low file size. This super-light theme comes with an advanced options panel that makes you able to easily customize your website.
If you’re looking for a lightweight WordPress theme and want to access many additional features and plugins at the same time, then you should search for popular items on ThemeForest. TheGem is a beautiful & fast multi-purpose theme that brings high performance to your website.
This popular WordPress theme includes a lot of features like pre-made demos, a one-click demo importer, a powerful control panel, and more. However, it hasn’t a small file size but if you’re looking for a fast-loading WordPress theme for multiple use cases, TheGem is a great choice for you.
Here is another multi-purpose WordPress theme. Universal is a well-developed, lightweight, and fast WordPress theme with more than 80 pre-made inner pages and over 25 different styles for each page. You can download it from ThemeForest and create your super-fast website with ease.
“Universal is a modern multi-purpose, minimalistic, easy to use, lightweight and fast loading WordPress theme for building a simple and beautiful business or personal website.”
Best Free Lightweight Themes for WordPress
The fewer features, lines of code, plugins, and add-ons, the lower the file size!
The official website of WordPress is a good source for finding lightweight themes. Coming up, I will show you some of the best WordPress themes (lightweight, fast, and absolutely free) available on the WordPress repository.
This is the default theme on a fresh install of WordPress at the moment. Twenty Twenty-One is developed by the creators of WordPress so it works very well with all features of everybody’s favorite CMS. It is a clean, simple, and lightweight theme and it also has brothers and sisters in the WordPress repository! Twenty-Twenty, Twenty-Nineteen, Twenty-Seventeen, and so on, are its predecessors. They are all lightweight, fast, and elegant WordPress themes.
If you want to install a WooCommerce-compatible theme on your site and create a fast online store using a free lightweight theme, then download OneStore and build your website quickly!
“OneStore is a lightweight, fast, highly customizable, and flexible theme and supports all popular page builders”
KnowledgeCenter is a free lightweight theme for help-desk, FAQ, or documentation websites. It has a white and simple environment, and its minimalistic design helps your visitors focus on their questions or the content. It is a fast WordPress theme and lets you create a documentation website for free.
The last item in this list is Incise. It is another free and elegant WordPress theme that is perfect for writers and bloggers who want to showcase their content on a simple and minimalist website. Incise is a free theme, and lets you also customize your website with options like header image and footer customization.
Build Your Fast-Loading WordPress Website with Lightweight Themes
Well, I hope this article helped you find a fast and lightweight theme for your WordPress website. If you have chosen a theme, you can easily download it and create your dream website today. But if you are still looking for a lightweight theme or want more collections to choose from, please feel free to search for what you want in the articles below. Thank you for reading!
Love Discord emojis, but you’re trying to figure out the best Discord emotes for your server? Why not try out a Discord emoji maker? In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best Discord emojis you can customize right here in your browser, right now. Not sure how to add emojis to Discord? We’ll help you with that too.
How to Quickly Make Discord Custom Emojis With a Discord Emoji Maker
There are so many ways you could make your own emotes for Discord. Not sure how to make emotes on Discord? You could use graphics software like Adobe Photoshop, for example. But what if you don’t have software? You could try out a Discord emote maker, like Placeit.
Placeit is an awesome, browser-based design tool that you can use to create mockups, logos, designs, and much more. It’s a fun and convenient Discord emote maker too!
Check out these cute, custom emojis for Discord that were designed, customized, and resized all in a browser, no software required, with Placeit.
Let’s take a look at how to make Discord emojis easily and quickly with this online tool.
1. Choose a Discord Emoji Maker Template to Get Started
First, begin by browsing and selecting a template that you’d like to customize. Consider this just your starting point, because you can really dig in and customize your design with Placeit.
2. Easily Customize Discord Emojis in Your Browser
Next comes the fun part: it’s time to customize the design.
On the left, we can adjust the font and font color, add more text, and even upload more image content.
On the right, we can change colors and graphics. This is important, because you’ll want to set your background to transparent for Discord emojis (unless you don’t want your image to be transparent).
Remember, emotes for Discord are small. You can include details if you want to, but sometimes, less is more. Here’s a look at how I customized this Discord emote. Click here to edit this custom design on Placeit yourself!
3. Easily Save and Download Your Discord Custom Emojis
Once you’ve created your own cool emotes for Discord, you can easily save and download your work in Placeit.
Save your best Discord emotes, because you can always go back and revise your draft. For example, we could reuse this heart emote with different text, if we wanted to.
You can also save designs as Favorites, if you’d like to use the original base design again.
Once you’re ready to download, just click Download and choose one of the available options. Some designs, like this heart, are free!
4. But Wait, What About Discord Emote Size Requirements?
Discord emote size is an important thing to consider here. When you download your work from Placeit, you’ll get a high-resolution file, appropriate for printing. This is cool if you want to turn your design into a T-shirt, poster, or other printed piece, but it’s not appropriate for Discord.
So, what do we do?
Luckily, Placeit also has a free image cropper. It’s completely online, browser-based, and super easy to use. Just click Upload New Image, and choose your file from your computer. Set the dimensions to 128×128. This size will work well for Discord (which will resize it to 32×32).
Then, simply click Download to download your finished Discord emote. Easy, right? This tool is particularly handy for cropping out extras and previewing how your emote will look in a square space.
5. Try Out Your Custom Emojis for Discord
Not sure how to add emotes to Discord? To add new emotes to Discord, you will need to own a service (which is free), or you will need permissions within a server to add new emotes.
You can find these settings by going to the server icon and right-clicking on PC or Control-clicking on Mac. Choose Server Settings > Emoji.
Then, simply click Upload Emoji to choose the file from your computer. You can give your new Discord emoji an alias too.
And that’s it! Now, we can use our new Discord custom emojis. Here’s a look at the heart emoji that we customized in action. Isn’t it cute?
Want to Learn More About How to Make Discord Emotes?
Curious about how to make Discord emotes? Did you know you can even use Twitch emotes in Discord too? Check out this free walkthrough from Envato Tuts+. It covers everything from how to add emotes to Discord, different ways to make Discord emojis, and more. There’s even a lengthier walkthrough, if you’re having trouble with how to add emojis to Discord.
Now that we’ve taken a look at some ways to make emotes in Discord, let’s take a look at some cool emotes for Discord that you can customize right now. These could also work as Twitch emotes; Discord can use those too!
Looking for something soft and cuddly? Then try working with this fun design. Change up the text or crop it any way you prefer to make a cute, custom Discord emote.
Here’s another super cute design. Remember, the content here is customizable too: from the text to the colors, and even the illustration itself. You can get creative with it.
Some of the best Discord emojis are the expressive ones. Try something funny like this pet-inspired Discord emoji. Add your own text, or maybe try this one with a different image entirely.
This is another cute take on a sad pet. Did you know you can upload your own images to Placeit too? Use this as a starting point and push this emote in any direction you prefer.
There’s lots of cute character art to customize over on Placeit too. Change up the colors to make this avatar suit your preferences. Change up the text and make this design just right for you.
Sometimes, we just feel “meh”, right? This cute Discord emote is a fun choice for a less than fun emotion. Remember, emotive concepts are often some of the best Discord emotes.
Text emotes can be such a fun idea to try in your Discord server. Try a starter template like this one and mix up the font, style, color, and even what it says.
Isn’t this a fun, cute concept? Crop and customize this one to suit the message you’d like to portray. Remember, you can do all of your cropping and resizing on Placeit too.
Isn’t this kitty the cutest? The designs on Placeit come in high resolution by default, so you can take your emote and also turn it into a T-shirt to share with your community.
Character art and avatars can be such a fun way to visually express an emotion. You can customize this character’s hair, skin, and accessories to match whatever look you prefer.
What a cute little character, right? There are so many fun graphics to choose from on Placeit, and this is just a sample. Swap it out, customize the colors, and have fun with it.
If you’re going to use text in your Discord emote, it’s often best to keep it simple, like a single word. It portrays the emotion clearly and simply too, doesn’t it? Sometimes, we just wish we could unsee.
Here’s another example of a fun image paired with a simple word. Too much content in your Discord emoji and it might be difficult to see. Keep it simple yet fun.
A funny approach can end up having a lot of appeal to your users in your Discord server. Try a silly take on common expressions you come across in your Discord chat.
Love puppers? There’s plenty of pet imagery to choose from in the gallery on Placeit. Or remember, you can upload imagery of your own and customize it in this design too.
You can also use your Discord emote to reinforce and share messages, like wearing a mask or being kind to others. Here’s a really cute example that helps spread an important message.
Feeling grumpy? Placeit has a custom emote for that too. Remember, these are starter designs. You can completely change the font, the color, the message, and even the imagery.
Custom characters and avatars like this one are customizable in Placeit too. Try a different color, customize the skin color, and experiment with a different color scheme.
Isn’t this sleepy emote cute? Try customizing the text. Remember, you can easily crop and customize this content to work best in a Discord server setting.
This is a simple yet memorable Discord emoji. Prefer a different message? Change it up, right in your browser, to whatever text you prefer. You can even customize the colors on the cat!
What Kind of Emotes for Discord Would You Make?
There are so many fun possibilities when it comes to Discord custom emojis. What kind of Discord emojis do you prefer? What would be the best Discord emotes for your server?
Remember to check out Placeit if you’re looking for a Discord emoji maker. It’s also a great place to brainstorm ideas and try them out, right from the comfort of your browser. You don’t need software to jump in and start designing.
Want to learn more about how to make Discord emojis, Twitch emotes, and more? Check out these other tutorials from Envato Tuts+. Happy designing!
Google I/O is done, and so is Microsoft Build — that means Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is the last high-profile software showcase for at least a month. If you’re one to take Apple at its word, this year’s WWDC is shaping up to be the “biggest and best yet,” which leads us to the obvious question: what does the company plan to show off this year? Short answer: a lot.
This Arabic calligraphy beginner tutorial is packed with information. In this lesson, we’ll look at two more sets of “design elements” before we start putting it all together to create letterforms and compositions.
But what if you’re a digital artist or graphic designer and need modern Arabic fonts ready to use? We’ll also review some Arabic fonts online from Envato Elements.
If you’re looking for the best Arabic fonts online for your digital projects, scroll down after this Arabic calligraphy beginner tutorial. There’s a hand-picked selection of premium Arabic calligraphy fonts from Envato Elements.
What You Will Learn in This Arabic Calligraphy Art Tutorial
Kashida learning: The Art of Justification
Ta’jîm and other diacritics
Exercises to learn Arabic calligraphy
How to write Arabic letters in calligraphy
Kashida Learning: The Art of Justification
Spacing, which we have studied in an earlier lesson, should not be confused with kashida (aka tamdîd, tatwîl or madd, all of which means “elongation” or “stretch”), the equivalent of justification for Latin-script texts. To justify a text is to make sure all the lines in a block of text begin and end on the same level. When a block of text is not justified, it is ragged left or right, like this:
In contrast, below is text that has been justified. In the Latin script, this is done by expanding or contracting the space between letters. In the Arabic script, it is done by stretching the letters themselves, and this is not necessarily in the context of equalizing a text: kashida can be applied to a standalone word just to make it more interesting.
I want to make a subtle distinction here between stretching actual letters and extending the connecting stroke to the next letter. For our purposes, we’ll refer to the first case as stretch or mashq, and to the second as lengthening or tatwîl. Kashida will refer to justification in general as achieved by either or both.
The text above shows examples of lengthening only, as a computer font can do no more. Lengthening is only applicable to some connecting letters, when they do connect (that is, when they are in their initial or medial form):
Lengthening is not applicable to boxed letters, or to be more accurate, is unwanted there. This is because boxed letters, which are strongly horizontal, can be stretched in their body —at least in rectilinear scripts. Not so in round scripts, so stretching is largely exclusive to Kufic.
Stretching is preferred over lengthening whenever possible, because it doesn’t create a big white space in the texture of the text. Therefore, if a letter can stretch, to lengthen it makes no sense, and looks wrong. Dâl, for one, is not a connecting letter, so it could not be lengthened anyway. Boxed letters are useful because they can stretch even when they are final or isolated.
When a letter ends in a flat tail, that can be lengthened as well:
Examples of lengthening (1), stretching (2) and lengthened tails (3) in the Blue Qur’ân.
This leaves us with a few letters that can neither stretch nor lengthen in the positions shown:
Inevitably, some words are going to be impossible to stretch.
Here’s a list of words that offer zero to many possibilities for justification. A red cross means that option is not possible; an orange one, that it is possible, but not desirable. Let’s examine why.
In the case of ??? lengthened to ???????????, we have already seen that when a letter can stretch, it makes no sense to lengthen it instead.
The next word has two lengthening options because it contains two letters that can be lengthened. What difference does it make which we use? The difference is beauty. While the ????????? option is not wrong, it is, simply put, a boring option, because the long stroke is bang in the middle. The word is then divided into two somewhat equal parts, which appears static yet not accurate enough to be satisfying.
In contrast, the uneven split in ?????????? is dynamic—the final Ayn looks much better on its own, if split there must be. There is also the fact that the Yâ’ here is the long sound, and matching the lengthening of the line to that of the sound is both pleasing and artful.
The final word offers several possibilities and it’s not so easy to discard some. ????????????? was discarded because, again, we have a box letter being lengthened instead of stretched. It is even more undesirable here because the two verticals of the Tâ’ and Lâm have been split apart, and verticals, as we saw in our lesson on Spacing, are always better close together.
The next discard is based on sheer unattractiveness; it is not necessarily wrong to have more than one kashida in the same word, but it needs to look good and balanced, and this is not the case. Perhaps if they were both the same length, the result would be less half-baked, and perhaps context would make the difference. It’s not cut and dried.
The same goes for the other options—they may or may not work, depending on context. Personally, I would choose the stretched option if I wanted the word to remain blocky, or one of those that isolate a single letter ( ????????????? or ???????????? ), for the dynamism of the result.
Historically, kashida was used for various reasons, some aesthetic and some functional. The list offers suggestions for introducing this device in a composition to great effect.
Aesthetic Use
Justification itself is the most obvious use: leveling the beginning and end of every line in a paragraph so that it is altogether shaped like a regular block, or adjusting the length of a single line.
Introducing breathing spaces in a body of text, and/or a pleasing rhythmic pattern of spaces.
Positioning letters (pushing them out of the way, so to speak) so that ascenders and descenders don’t clash, especially when lines are quite close together, but also to create alignments within the text.
In this 9th century Qur’ân, the section title is made to take up the full length of the page, as well as being highlighted by its golden colour.
Functional Use
A word is often extended (to the point that it takes up an entire line) to mark the beginning or end of a paragraph. This was particularly common when Arabic used no other punctuation.
Bringing attention to important words in a text, the equivalent of bolding or highlighting them.
Despite the tightness of this page, it is immediately clear where a new Sura begins: it is where the kashida is present, highlighting the word Rahmân in the Bismillah that begins every Sura. In later times the kashida moved to the first word, Bismillah itself, but it still served the same purpose.
Other considerations
Where possible, and if not overridden by other considerations, kashida is made to match a long sound as mentioned above.
Two-letter words are generally not stretched or lengthened.
Avoid “stairs”, or the superposition of elongations on two consecutive lines, unless that is done by design and well studied.
Exercise 1
Here is a sentence with two stretchable letters and plenty of connections that can be lengthened.
(This is an old Lebanese proverb that says: “In April nature becomes like a bride.”)
Print out Exercise1.pdf which is included in the downloads folder. You will find a grid over three lines, with the first and last letter of the sentence already in place. Your task is to distribute and justify these four words over the three lines in a way that looks nice to you.
You can try several possibilities; I recommend starting by just trying out the kashidas without worrying about aesthetics. The restrictions in place actually make it easier by not allowing infinite possibilities. Exercise1solutions.pdf shows two possibilities and points out what makes them interesting.
The letters are very thin so that you can copy them by hand, preferably freehand even if the lines don’t come out straight. It’s quicker so you’ll be able to focus on the exercise rather than on handling the ruler. Also, it’s about time we start drawing letters, even skinny ones, to warm up for the next lesson!
Ta’jîm and Other Diacritics
These are a number of additional signs that can accompany an Arabic text to indicate sounds not included in the pure alphabet. They are often neglected in the rectilinear scripts, which predate ta’jîm, and much more prominent (compulsory, even) in the round scripts, but it is good to have them in our palette, so to speak, as potential for added layers of visual interest.
However, we must bear in mind that there is a certain hierarchy to be respected in their usage. Vowel marks, for instance, cannot be included if pointing is not. The diacritics are discussed in order of precedence, starting with the highest rung of the hierarchy, unless specified.
As this is not a language lesson, I’ll only give minimal info regarding the sound and function of these marks, focusing instead on their shape and position, i.e. what we need to know to be able to create with them.
Ta’jîm
These are the diacritic “dots”, or for a better term, the pointing used to differentiate letters that share a letterform, such as ? and ?. Ta’jîm, or i’jâm, literally means “foreignization”, because, like the other sets of signs that make reading easier, pointing was introduced for the sake of populations that were not native Arabic speakers and therefore would struggle with the correct reading of the Qur’ân.
The dots are at the top of the diacritic ladder of hierarchy: they need to be present before any other level is included. If they are omitted, then the script should be entirely bare, save for the isolated hamza (see below) which has a semi-letter status.
Tashkîl
Literally “forming [elements]”, these are phonetic guides or diacritics.
Hamza:
Shaped like a small Ayn without returning tail. Depending on the sound accompanying it, it can be placed over the Alif, Wâw and Yâ’ (in which case the Yâ’ loses its dots), under the Alif, or independently on the baseline. The size of the hamza changes subtly: when attached to one of the letters above, it tends to be tiny, like other diacritics. When it’s isolated on the baseline, it is more sizeable, without attaining the full size of a letter. Scaling the isolated hamza is an interesting design conundrum.
Shadda (“stress”):
This sign is the equivalent of doubling a consonant. It has the shape of a tiny Sîn without a bowl (somewhat like a mini-W) and can be found above any letter except the Alif. Another aspect of the shadda is that it pairs up with the short vowels as shown below: fatha and damma over it, kasra under it (not under the baseline, exceptionally).
Hierarchy-wise, the shadda and diacritic hamza are in close contest. However, the isolated hamza is a semi-letter and as such, takes precedence even over ta’jîm.
Harakât (“movements”):
They indicate the short vowel sounds that the alphabet lacks. Fluent speakers are expected not to need them, and even today they are mostly used in learning texts, children’s literature, religious texts where pronunciation is vital, or here and there where a word is ambiguous. And, of course, for purely aesthetic purposes. These signs are:
Fatha: A diagonal stroke from upper right to lower left, or horizontal—never vertical so as not to be confused with the dagger alif. Always above the letter.
Kasra: Same shape as the fatha, but positioned below the letter.
Damma: Shaped like a tiny Wâw, always above the letter.
Sukûn: A hollow circle indicating “stillness”, an absence of sound.
Madda: Shaped like a tilde, or possibly a long horizontal dash, but it should not be able to be confused with the fatha. It only appears above an Alif, doubling it; so in effect it is the Alif’s own shadda.
Dagger alif ??? ??????: This is an archaic way of writing the long a sound, as the Alif was originally often unwritten within a word; that’s why very old words, including the word Allah itself, have Alif vocalized but not written. As a result, the dagger alif occurs frequently in the Qur’an, but rarely in daily writing where words are spelled in the modern way—except words so old and common their spelling has been in continuous use unchallenged, such as “this”, hâdhâ ???, but even there, the pronunciation is assumed to be commonly known, and the sign is not used. It is a short vertical stroke above and between two letters, where the Alif sound should be.
Wasla: A “joining” symbol written above the Alif to suppress its pronunciation, joining two words without a glottal stop. It looks like a tiny Sâd without a bowl, and is only ever found on the first Alif of a word or of the article.
Evolution and Diversity
All of these symbols underwent a long evolution before settling in the form that we use today, and their entire history can be followed within Kufic texts, from complete absence to early experimental forms, until at last in the so-called Eastern Kufic, they are seen fully mature. Today’s average Arabic reader, looking at the text below, would automatically attempt to recognize the letters based on the red dots (until they realized that yielded no sense).
Abbasid Qur’ân, 8th or 9th century.
But these dots are not pointing at all! In this early vocalization system, they indicate the short vowel sounds (harakât, described below). The actual pointing is done in small dashes close to the letters, which themselves look exactly like what we now use for vowel sounds, so things were altogether turned around in the course of their evolution.
The example below, though later in time, has no diacritics at all other than pointing, and even that only where a word is too ambiguous. Thus the word ??????, near bottom right, has a full set of dots, while ?????? just above it, was judged too unmistakeable to warrant them.
The Blue Qur’ân, 10th century.
Contemporary to this is another manuscript where the system, in contrast, makes elaborate use of colour: red dots are still used for the short vowels, hamza are added in green, shadda in gold. The pointing is now even more discreet as the dashes are the same colour as the body text. You can just see an example on the bottom line, towards the left, where a thin dash on the Nûn of ?? is nearly eclipsed by a large red dot.
10th century Qur’ân.
One needs to also be aware of regional differences, which continue to this day—perhaps not in typed media, but at least in handwriting and calligraphy, particularly religious.
In Egypt, for instance, the final Yâ’ may be unpointed, causing the unaware reader to confuse it with a “broken alif”, written like an unpointed Yâ’ but pronounced like an Alif. North Africa, the province of the Maghribi scripts, followed its own line of evolution and so held on to some bits of early diacritics. In particular, the Qâf and Fâ’ are pointed differently than they are in the Mashriq: in the text below, the letter circled in red, looped with a single dot above, is a Qâf. The Fâ’ is circled in blue, and its dot is below the loop.
13th-century North African Qur’ân
Notice also another use of colour: the vowel marks, including a dagger alif, are the same colour as the body (and they are horizontal dashes, a signature of Maghribi), except for the sukûn. The latter is blue, like the shadda, presumably because they are both silent. There is another sign very much like sukûn, except for its green colour, over some Alifs: that is a wasla. One more circle, orange and full, stands for the hamza.
In the elegant Eastern Kufic page below, colours are used again, but more sparingly and within a fully-formed system.
Pointing is in large round dots, as if the previous ratio of bold lines to tiny dashes had been reversed, but is actually the most subtle part of the diacritics, as the dots are gold with only a fine outline.
Again the vocalized signs are all in one colour (red), while those that are mute, like the sukûn, are blue.
There is an additional detail of interest: circled in white, you’ll notice tiny letters, ? and ?, under their in-text equivalent. When pointing was still a novelty, it became customary for a time to annotate non-pointed letters with their tiny isolated self, as done here, for clarity.
Getting Creative With Pointing
The number and basic position of the dots, which identify letters, have been described in Anatomy of the Letterforms, and there’s little more to be said in the way of rules. There is much, however, to be said about what can be done with pointing as an aesthetic element. Because they’re so simple, and because calligraphy is about beauty more than function, dots are a singularly free part of the script.
Shape
The shape of the “dots” is by no means necessarily round. In fact they seldom are, looking at historic examples. We have already seen them written as dashes, and in the rounded scripts they are canonized as the rhombus shape created by the reed, which in the geometry of Kufic can translate to a dynamic square (diamond).
There is no restriction at all on their shape, in theory, except good taste: the more fanciful the shape, the more noticeable they are, and that can quickly become visually cloying. Even when working with a short sentence or a single word, it is always good to estimate the number of dots it contains before getting overly creative with them.
Here are two examples from my own work where the shape of the dots was determined during the design process, to enhance the composition.
The word ????? only contains three dots, and this design kept their repetition small. In addition, the sobriety of the design needed to be balanced with intricate touches. So I chose an unusually detailed shape for the dots, which worked beautifully as the intricacy of the pointing sets off the simplicity of the rest and gives a sense of scale, and vice versa; plain round dots would have made the whole composition look plain.
This next word, ????, has double the pointing, and the design multiplies that by 18! Normally I would leave out the dots altogether, but in this case, the extremely rectilinear Kufic would have been too severe. So once again I balanced it out, but this time using the simplest of shapes—dashes. Being harmonious with the dominating rectangles, they don’t intrude on the composition but echo it on a smaller scale, and by the same token make it more delicate than it would have been without them.
Size
The size of the dots is equally free, but I recommend not being arbitrary: Let the diameter be in a clear ratio to the line width (1:1, 1:2, 1:3…). This isn’t only perceived as looking right; it also ensures that you’ll always find a harmonious positioning. Otherwise aligning two or three dots can look very awkward. The same consideration applies to the distance between the dots and the line.
Dots in a ratio to the line of 1:1, 1:2 and 2:1 respectively
Positioning
The two dots can also, for instance, be placed vertically rather than horizontally. The three dots are usually in a triangle, but can just as well be aligned. If the line width of the letters is substantial, as it often is in Kufic, a creative approach could be to place the dots within the line width, or overlapping it halfway.
Examples of unusual dots positioning, from my work.
To Sum It Up:
Diacritics can be completely or partially omitted, bearing in mind the hierarchy of addition.
Diacritics can serve as visual accents by taking a different colour from the letters (with the distribution of colour very much up to the calligrapher).
There isn’t one final single system, even if most of those that were in use at one point or another are long out of use.
Pointing in particular is highly flexible in shape and location.
Diacritics can be modeled closely on the style of the letters, or made to completely contrast; for instance, freehand cursive diacritics to give movement to a very architectural Kufic.
Exercise 2
Below is a pointed and accented sentence. Print out a few copies of the unaccented version, included in the downloadable folder (Exercise2.pdf), and experiment with adding different levels of diacritics, using different colours in different ways, and modifying their shapes and placement to your taste.
(This is another old Lebanese proverb: “Roaring March is the month of earthquakes and downpours, with seven big snows, not counting the little ones.”)
5 Best Modern Arabic Fonts From Envato Elements
You now know more about how to write Arabic letters in calligraphy. We’ve reviewed kashida learning and some Arabic calligraphy exercises.
Finding professional Arabic fonts online can be complicated. But with an Envato Elements subscription, you’ll get unlimited Arabic font downloads.
If you’re a digital creator, you’ll love our subscription-based marketplace. For a low monthly fee, enjoy unlimited Arabic font downloads. You can also get unlimited premium fonts, graphic templates, actions and presets, and more.
Here are some of the best Arabic calligraphy fonts from Envato Elements:
Searching for top Arabic fonts online? Khodijah is one of our popular Arabic calligraphy fonts. This modern Arabic font was designed with a digital flat pen to achieve a clean, classic look.
This Arabic-style font is based on Hijaiyah letters. This makes it perfect for Islamic or Middle Eastern designs.
If you like Arab brushstroke fonts, Assyam is for you. This Arabic-style font has a contemporary look, and it’s easy to install.
Premium modern Arabic fonts like this are packed with nice features. You’ll get multilingual support and encoded characters. This means your Arab brushstroke font is accessible without additional software!
Arabic calligraphy fonts like this one are perfect if you’re looking for a classic look. Ramadhan is one of the top Arabic fonts online from Envato Elements. It’s perfect for any digital project. This Arabic font comes with an uppercase alphabet and numbers.
Do you need Arabic calligraphy fonts for classic or formal designs? Zanzabar is a superb option. This Arab brushstroke font will look good on restaurant logos, branding, or book covers.
This Arabic-style font comes with basic and extended Latin characters, numbers, punctuation, kerning, and ligatures.
Discover More Arabic Calligraphy Art and Resources
You’ve learned the basics in this Arabic calligraphy beginner tutorial. You’ve also seen top Arabic calligraphy fonts for your digital projects.
Remember, this post is part of our learn Arabic calligraphy series. If you want to explore more Arabic calligraphy art and tutorials, check these out:
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