Zael – The Disappearing Font.
Arabic type designer Ibrahim Hamdi, losing his sight to keratoconus, released Zael, a font that fades as his eyesight fails, to show what font piracy costs the people who draw letters.
- Brand
- Protype
- Agency
- Leo Burnett Dubai
- Market
- Middle East
- Region
- MENA
The challenge
Designers download and share fonts illegally, cutting typographers' income. Research for the type foundry Protype found creatives respect type design but don't see the consequences of piracy.
The idea
Leo Burnett Dubai turned Hamdi's story into the product: Zael gets less legible as his condition worsens, and money he never earned from widely pirated fonts could have paid for surgery. The font was sold through Protype's site with a personal message from Hamdi and pushed through figures in the design community. Prodigious ME produced.
Results
- Zael sales reached double the objective, according to the WARC case summary
Case study source: MMA Smarties (WARC) Source ↗
Awards
- Cannes Lions 2024Industry Craft – A01 TYPOGRAPHY: BRAND & COMMUNICATIONS DESIGNBronze
- MMA Smarties MENA 2025 Gold (Social Impact Marketing)
Credits
- Creative agency
- Leo Burnett Dubai
- Production
- Prodigious ME
- Founder, Protype
- Ibrahim Hamdi
