ZAINA solves bilingual typography with an ingenious punctuation trick

Cultural events that celebrate Middle Eastern and North African artists across Europe’s most prestigious venues require an identity that honours diverse traditions while speaking to contemporary audiences. This was the challenge facing Paris and Barcelona-based practice ZAINA when approached by Mir’a, a cultural association dedicated to promoting MENA talent through concerts, performances, screenings and exhibitions. The resulting bilingual identity system demonstrates how typography can become a bridge between cultures. Rather than treating Arabic and Latin scripts as separate elements, ZAINA’s approach weaves them together through what Co-founder & Creative Director Patrice Barnabé describes as “striking typographic compositions that showcase the interplay between both scripts.” The breakthrough came through an ingenious shared punctuation concept rooted in the client’s name. “Mir’a means ‘mirror’ in Arabic, so we designed a bespoke logo to echo that idea,” Barnabé explains. “When stacking the words Mir’a and مِرآة, the Latin apostrophe occupied the same space as the Arabic kasra, which is the vowel mark that gives the short ‘i’ or ‘ee’ sound.” By adapting the diacritic shape to function as both an apostrophe and a kasra, the design creates a visual connection that reflects the organisation’s unifying mission.