Website of the day…week…year…or this case Monday evening.
Doesn’t matter. Its dubaifont.com
My Back story (less interesting)
At work, I use Bluebeam Revu a fair bit. The ‘default’ font on my work Bluebeam Revu is Helvetica. Not sure this is the general default but don’t want to install on my laptop to check – maybe it’s probably Arial on a Windows machine. Dunno. I change to from Helvetica to Dubai. Just because I think Dubai is nice and clean.
My home laptop (which I am writing on now) does not have the Dubai font (nor Helvetica, incidentally). So, I googled ‘dubai font’ to try and find it. That took me to dubaifont.com
The Back Story (more interesting)
In a nutshell:
- Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum (37 years old). Sheik Hamdam for short or Fazza on Instagram is the (a?) Crown Prince of Dubai. Not he is the first in line, but VERY near the front of the line…maybe second, so Dubai’s Prince Harry?
- I looked at Fazza’s Instagram. He likes horses and various animals. He loves Dubai. He loves his kid(s).
- The Sheik commissioned the Dubai font. According to this article from the Gulf News it is the Dubai Government’s official font.
- The same article quotes the font as being “a gift to the world”, and I think you are free to use it as-is.
- Monotype designed it. Monotype, or Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc is a rabbit warren unto itself.
- Dubai partnered with Microsoft to package the Dubai font packages with Office365. My office uses the Microsoft cloud ecosystem, explaining Dubai being on my work laptop.
- For those of not using Office365, Dubai font is available free at dubaifont.com
The Sheik
Okay, I was intrigued to know more about this Sheik Hamdam fellow.
There Sheik’s Instagram account there were a few pics with a kid. Well, I thought they were ‘a kid’…kids kind of all look the same to me. I wondered what the Crown Prince of Dubai’s wife looked like, especially since there is a distinct lack of wife photos on his Instagram account. Lots of horses, kids, buildings and a few falcons – no mums. No women at all actually.
Turns out the Sheik has 6 wives and 30 kids.
30 kids? I dunno. Particularly when you have passions for horses, falconry, architecture and font design… and women too presumably.
Where is the TIME IN THE DAY FOR IT ALL???
Anyway. 6 of 30 (assuming they are his) below…