Riyad Bank's exclusive typeface: a corporate Arabic–Latin system carrying the bank's campaign headlines on screen and in print, and running live on its site today. Designed by RTL Type at Dawaer.
An exclusive Arabic typeface designed and developed for Riyad Bank to carry its corporate character, in use today across its website and campaigns.
Riyad Bank is among Saudi Arabia's oldest and most widely present banks, and its visual identity passes across millions of screens daily. An exclusive Arabic typeface was designed for it — owned outright — to be its written voice in everything published under its name.
A bank's corporate face is not a matter of taste. The figure on a statement, the condition in an advertisement's small print, the headline on a screen — all are read in the same typeface, and each sits at a different size and in a different context. The calibration was for legibility across sizes before elegance at display size.
The work covered the Arabic glyphs across weights, and a companion Latin sitting on the same baseline without looking borrowed — the hardest requirement in any banking identity that writes two scripts on one line.
Numerals are their own problem in a banking face: they are read in tables, statements and contracts, and are set to a common width so they align vertically when they meet in a column.
The face is in use today on the bank's own website and across its campaigns — in headlines, body copy and visual furniture.
The work was produced through RTLtype.com, the Dawaer Digital Development service specialising in Arabic typefaces and their extensions.