On 9 September 2009 Dubai's brand new Metro system had its grand opening, and as of 10 September the public have been able to enjoy this modern and high tech enterprise. The new Metro system is just one part of Dubai's very ambitious modernization and expansion drive to transform it into a commercial hub for the future. A total of US$26bn is earmarked for such programmes in the entire United Arab Emirates.

The Metro system consists of four lines – Red, Green, Blue and Purple – of which Red and Green have largely been completed, with the entire system electronically controlled, similar to London's DLR (Docklands Light Railway) system. The train coaches themselves are modern and comfortably furnished, with one coach reserved for women and children for safer travel, and to allow access with pushchairs even during rush hour.

The jewels of the Dubai Metro system are its stations, designed by global architectural design specialists Aedas along the themes of Fire, Earth, Wind and Water, with each element setting the tone for the colour scheme within the stations and the ornamental patterns that form part of the architectural structure. Aedas also provided the initial ideas for the wayfinding system, including the choice of typography. London design agency Transport Design Consultancy was commissioned to refine Aedas's ideas, and design a system that conformed to all standards and requirements for inclusive signage, with the choice of font being a vital ingredient.

Dalton Maag worked closely with TDC to create a font design and typographic system covering both Arabic and Latin, which fulfilled all of the functional requirements, but was unique in a number of ways. Too often in dual language systems, the Latin script has been used to establish the tone of typography. This means that other script systems, such as Arabic, have been treated as subservient, with little consideration for their rich heritage and visual semblance to the rest of the identity. We believe that this project is the first time that two entirely different script systems have been developed in unison to establish a harmony across cultures and with the identity as a whole.

Some structural elements, such as the size of the signage panels, had already been decided upon, so this very much dictated the size of text and pictograms. This is an important fact as Arabic fonts tend to have deep descenders, and in this instance the Arabic text sat on the line above its Latin equivalent. Similarly, the width of the font had to be kept tight to enable a relatively high letter-count per line. However, this reduction in the width of a Latin font meant that the x-height had to be increased to retain legibility of the lowercase letters. Controlling the width of the Arabic letters was equally important, although generally the Arabic lines run shorter than the Latin. Open letter forms in Latin are more legible, so we chose to design a font with primarily humanist features, and for Arabic, a primarily Kufic design is considered appropriate in signage.

The majority of our experience at that point was in designing Latin fonts, so for this project we proceeded to establish a basic design concept that was at once unique and highly legible. This basic concept was then immediately applied to a sample set of Arabic letterforms, and by comparing the behaviour of the conceptual features on the two different script systems, we were able to make refinements and to finalize the exact nature of each character in the font. We were also surprised to find how much the Arabic letter construction and stroke modulation was able to influence the Latin design. Working on both script systems simultaneously allowed our design team to give equal attention to both, every day comparing and refining design details. To make the right decisions about font weight, width, and other crucial proportions, we set real station names in the font and printed them at full size. The visual impact of a real-life sign is quite different to seeing it printed at reduced size, and allowed us to fully compensate for visual distortions, such as the halo effect that occurs in back-lit signs.

The final font was delivered in digital format, allowing users to simply follow the design guidelines in regards to size, leading and colour to ensure the correct visual appearance of the typography in any signage. The font is engineered to include OpenType features which automatically take care of the choice and placement of character designs when typing a word. The Transport Dubai font forms an integral part of the entire station branding and wayfinding system, but can easily be expanded into other applications in the future.

Arabic is the world's second most common script system after Latin, with a user base spanning across North Africa, and the Middle East. As tourism and transport opportunities grow, so does our responsibility to ensure that we treat other cultures with mutual respect. For this reason we collaborate with Prof. Rayan Abdullah on all of our Arabic projects.