You think you know Afrikan fonts? Think again
Afrikan fonts. What do you visualize? Tribal looking, grungy, handwritten & the like. Whatever you’ve pictured in your head, is it an actual Afrikan font or just a font inspired by Afrikan design elements?. Let’s take a deeper dive to explore the difference.
I find it mind-boggling to see what is commonly referred to as Afrikan fonts, Afrikan typeface or Afrikan typography. Latinization. That’s the scream let out in any mention or search of Afrikan fonts, a bunch of letters inspired various design elements from different Afrikan cultures. Afrikan font? NO! Maybe I was too quick to judge, before I make a case for my opinion, let’s look at the different modern definitions of what a font is:
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. — Wikipedia
A font is a collection of glyphs used for the visual depiction of character data. A font is often associated with a set of parameters (for example, size, posture, weight, and serifness), which, when set to particular values, generate a collection of imagable glyphs. — Unicode Glossary
Summarized, a font is a collection of related letters or glyphs of a particular writing system or systems. Thanks to colonialism, sigh, and other socio-economic factors, the Latin alphabet has risen to become the most dominant writing system in the world & this precedence created a problem…or misinformation of some kind. Latinization.
The ‘latin alphabet’ we are familiar with is just one example of a writing system and there are other writing systems in the world, over 250 of them, yes, 250+ known writing systems. And they each have their own unique visual look.
The image above clearly demonstrates the effects of latinization. What we see here are fonts that have taken inspiration from Afrikan design elements, but the letters themselves are from the Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet is not native to any Afrikan country and only came into usage via colonisation and Christian Missionary activities. How are they Afrikan fonts when the characters themselves are foreign?
I’m not proud to say that I have also contributed to this Latinization of Afrikan fonts via Mutapa typeface. I also understand the fact that some Afrikan countries do not have writing systems of their own in use, like my dear Zimbabwe, thus they end up using the Latin or Arabic alphabet. As a result, the proliferation of ‘Afrikan inspired’ fonts becomes inevitable.
At the same time, these latinized ‘Afrikan inspired fonts’ whitewash and further marginalize existing Afrikan writing systems, most of which are facing extinction. The solution is designing fonts that also support Afrikan writing systems. Rocket science. No, it’s not that complicated, computer fonts can support more than one writing system thus we can have both the latin alphabet and an actual afrikan alphabet within 1 font. Simple.
In Afrika, there are over 40 native Afrikan writing systems, dating back to ancient times & some contemporary systems created in the 21st century, yet the representation in the digital and physical world is very slim. In my opinion, a font that supports any of the native Afrikan writing systems qualifies as a true Afrikan font. That’s it. Anything else is something else.
Congratulations for making it to the end! You’re now in the realm of Afrikan typography. If your font supports any of these writing systems then it is truly an “Afrikan Font.” Afrikan fonts are those that support Afrikan writing systems, how can a font be Afrikan when it can’t be used to write any ‘native Afrikan writing system’…what’s Afrikan about it anyway?
I’ll leave you explore some interesting visuals of true Afrikan fonts:
