Visual brand identity development in Dubai

In the UAE, most brands appear in two scripts at once, Arabic and Latin. Signs, packaging, apps and business cards carry both. An identity designed in Latin letters first and given Arabic later tends to look lopsided. The Arabic reads as an afterthought. Customers who read it notice.

Start with the wordmark. If the brand name exists in both scripts, both versions should be drawn as a pair from the beginning. They need similar weight, a similar sense of width and a shared personality, even though the letterforms have nothing in common. A geometric Latin wordmark calls for an Arabic partner with comparable structure, often drawing on Kufi styles. A softer, flowing Latin mark sits better beside a Naskh-based Arabic.

Proportion is tricky. Arabic script has tall ascenders, deep descenders and a baseline that behaves differently from Latin. Set at the same point size, the two often look mismatched. Designers adjust size and position by eye until they feel balanced. Then the ratio goes into the guidelines.

Typeface pairing follows the same logic. Many type families now include matching Arabic and Latin designs, drawn to work together. That saves effort, but have a native reader check the Arabic quality. Some families treat Arabic as a quick extension. Pairing two separate families also works, when chosen carefully.

Layout is the next issue. Arabic runs right to left. A page built for Latin text, with the logo top left and text flowing rightwards, has to be mirrored for Arabic. Directional icons such as arrows and progress bars flip as well. Numbers and embedded Latin words keep their own direction inside Arabic text, which complicates templates. Page order, form fields and table columns reverse too, so document and interface templates need an Arabic version built on purpose instead of a mirrored export.

When both languages share a surface, decide the hierarchy. Which script leads? Side by side, or stacked? On a shopfront or a vehicle, the arrangement should be set once in the guidelines, not reinvented by each supplier.

Test everything small. Arabic detail can close up in a favicon, an app icon or a receipt printer. A simplified version of the wordmark for small use is often needed. Draw it early.

Identities are usually approved from presentation boards. The logo sits on a clean background, next to a mocked-up business card, a tote bag and a phone screen. Everything looks good because every example was picked to flatter the design. The real test comes later, when the identity meets an invoice template, a crowded web page or an exhibition banner with too much text.

A short pilot closes that gap. Before the identity is finalised, the design team applies it to a handful of items the company produces every week, using actual materials with real text and real constraints: a sales proposal, a product page, a social post announcing a hire, an email newsletter, a shipping label.

Choose items that are awkward. Long tables, dense legal text, low-quality partner photos, a spreadsheet exported to PDF. These show where the system is thin. A palette that works on a hero image may have no colour suitable for a warning message. A typeface may lack the weights a data table needs.

Involve the people who make these items every day, such as a marketing coordinator, a salesperson and someone from support. Ask each to produce one item with the new templates while a designer watches. Where they hesitate, the system is unclear. Where they improvise, a rule is missing.

Keep the pilot short. A week or two suits most companies. The aim is to find gaps, and a full redesign of every document is out of scope.

Record findings in a simple list covering what broke, why, and what the fix is. Some fixes are small, like a darker shade of the main colour or a condensed type weight. Others go deeper. If the logo cannot sit on the photos the company actually owns, either the photo direction needs work or the logo needs a different lockup.

Photograph or screenshot every pilot item and lay them out together on one board. Seen side by side, the materials reveal whether the identity feels like one company or several, and that view often convinces a hesitant leadership team more than any presentation could.

Only then sign off. The identity that goes into the guidelines is the version that survived real material. It is harder to argue with and easier to adopt. It is also less likely to be quietly abandoned a few months after launch.