The International School of London (ISL) operates campuses in both London and Qatar, offering an International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum.
During my time on the communications team at ISL Qatar, the Head of Design, Juliana Altoé, proposed the idea of unifying the visual identity of both campuses while allowing for flexibility in design to accommodate each location’s unique needs.
Juliana and I collaborated on the concept of creating a custom typeface that could serve as a cohesive design element, while still enabling each campus to retain its distinct color palette and graphic language.
We developed the typeface in two variations: one for display use and one for body text, each tailored to meet specific functional requirements. Since the school uses Microsoft Office as its primary platform, we also created versions of the typeface for Office applications, ensuring it was easily accessible to both teachers and students.
Our starting point was to thoroughly review the visual elements from both campuses to identify a common thread. We quickly found that both schools shared a similar front-facing style, particularly in the way the text “International School of London” appeared daily to students, staff, and visitors. Among the various design features, we identified two distinctive elements in the lettering: the unique style of the “t” and the “r”, which stood out as particularly characteristic. These forms became a key inspiration for the development of our custom typeface, we called it the “umbrella t”.
The typeface was developed to attend all latin based languages teached at the school, including Arabic latinization. It has almost 1900 glyphs, including arrows and circled numbers.
ISL Qatar posts designed by Salma Abdelgaed – ISL London posts by Juliana Altoé | Arabic text in Noto Sans Arabic
Font Design: Diego Maldonado
Font Engineering: Henrique Beier (Harbor Type)