An early pioneer in modern Arabic script design, Akl created a font based on the Phoenician alphabet in the 1950s. “He spoke really passionately about Arabic.

All these rules are known to a calligrapher, whose expertise is the writing of Urdu in a simple and beautiful font. Nasrullah Mehr is one such Pakistani calligrapher.

Art exhibition: Simple calligraphy ‘fails to make impression ... Mehmal, another art student, said most of the pieces on display just showed fonts used in Urdu magazines without any innovation.