Karim is a traditional-style Arabic text face, designed in response to a demand for a traditional text face adapted to setting Quranic commentaries. Within the constraints of the standard character set and typesetting program, Karim's design aims to recall the style and fluency of manuscript Naskh without, however, reproducing the idiosyncrasies of any particular calligrapher.The line weight chosen is heavier than usual for a traditional light face in order to benefit the reproduction of small size Tafsir text. A tall kaf, deep descenders and slightly inclined alifs and lams all help to suggest the cursiveness of manuscript.
The type-style that emerges is characterized by restraint and clarity: qualities suited to Karim´s original purpose, and ones that recommend it for wider useKarim ships in the OpenType format, and includes Latin glyphs from Janson Text Roman, allowing the single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. Karim's code pages incorporate Basic Latin (Western CP 1252 Latin 1/ANSI and Macintosh US Roman) and the Arabic character set (CP 1256), which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The font includes tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.
