Turkey: a new symbol for the lira

[eliason]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

News story.
To cut to the chase:

[Nick Shinn]

Oh yeah, that will fit low res and Extra Bold Condensed to a t.

[eliason]

"Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the anchor shape means that currency is a "safe harbor" while the upward facing lines represent its rising prestige." (reports CBS)

[Andreas Stötzner]

Reminds me of the mess of the Euro-sign introduction years ago. Well, we fontists got it right in the end, at least. Despite of all the official shit.
But now this, I don’t know what to say.

[Riccardo Sartori]

I suppose they got tired of waiting to being accepted into the EU… ;-)

[J Weltin]

We will get this right in the end, too.

[eliason]

What kind of contrast and terminal would you give that curved stroke in a seriffed typeface?

[dezcom]

Would that be a phallucy?

[Nick Shinn]

"… the umbrella shape means that the currency is “well protected” while the horizontal lines represent its solid value."

[hrant]

I think it could've been worse.
Although it does look a bit too much like a weapon...

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

The symbol was the result of a competition, unfortunately not the best way to get a good design.

This is a typographic symbol, and yet, like the Euro, it was designed by someone who is not a type designer, and the criteria for judging would not, I assume, have had any mention of scalability, slant, weight variance or screen rendering.

You know, one line for the crossbar, rather than two, would have been just fine, and would have magicked away all kinds of monstrous type production problems that the double bar will create.

[serdar]

The crossbar was parallel to the baseline in the winning entry but revised later by the in-house designers of Central Bank of Turkey.

Apart from the need to symbolize growth and rising prestige, another motivation for the revision, in my opinion, might be the fear of a resemblance to the Christian cross (which would be even more significant with a single line crossbar).

It has also been criticized by some to be the rotated copy of the Armenian currency sign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_dram_sign).

All seven finalists selected by the jury:

[quadibloc]

I would have thought that, given the name of the currency unit, they should just have taken a British pound sign, but modified it to have three horizontal bars instead of one (or two), instead of going with something completely novel.

In some subsequent searching, I've found that the form with two crossbars, although sometimes infrequently used for the British pound, was associated with the Italian lira as well, confirming my suggestion that the Turks would need to use three crossbars to have their own unique member of this family.

[hrant]

Nick, for something like this you do want a type designer
consulting, but you don't want a type designer actually
making the final decision; for that you need an alphabet
designer. Those are pretty rare though. :-)

--

I think slanting the bars was an improvement,
since it balances the symbol better.

> It has also been criticized by some to be the
> rotated copy of the Armenian currency sign

If that's a coincidence, that's not so bad. If that's a
ruse to get Europeans to like Turkey more, that's not
good (simply because deceit backfires in the end).
If it's a genuine nod towards the need for honesty
in dealing with the Armenian Genocide (unlikely) then
that's awesome - just as impressive as the April 24th
demonstration held in Istanbul last year.

Even though I'm Armenian, the one thing I like about
the symbol is its gentle allusion of the Arabic past of
Turkish writing.

Looking at the 7 finalists, I would have put my
money on the middle one, since it does the most
to make Turkey look Western. But I still prefer
the one they ended up with.

> taken a British pound sign

!
Turkey is not part of the British Isles.
Lucky for Turkey.

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

… for something like this you do want a type designer consulting …

At the very least.
As someone who will be required to adapt the new character to many different kinds of font, a type designer would, one hopes, address the issues of scalability, slant, weight variance and screen rendering — and make sure that the design brief requires each entrant to show specimen glyphs of how their proposed symbol would look in a variety of typefaces, styles, and media. Not just Univers 45 or whatever.

[eliason]

What kind of contrast and terminal would you give that curved stroke in a seriffed typeface?

Answering my own question: the seriffed version could go in a number of different directions.

Barbed terminal on top right is for the literal-minded prime minister!

[Andreas Stötzner]

It is NOT a new character. (!) There is the Lira sign existing at codepoint 20A4, typographically a variant of the sterling glyph. End of story. (Note that by annotation it is specified just as LIRA, not as Italian or Turkish Lira per se.)

Everything else is just nonsense.

If you wish now to tune the design of 20A4 according to the new turkish briefing, feel free to do so. But I won’t, because it’s rubbish.

And if ever our turkish friends come to raise the request of a new character before ISO, I will say: 20A4.

[Riccardo Sartori]

the Lira sign [...], typographically a variant of the sterling glyph
Etymologically it would be the other way around ;-)

If you wish now to tune the design of 20A4 according to the new turkish briefing
I wonder which Opentype feature would be best: Localized Forms or Historical Forms?

[Andreas Stötzner]

… which Opentype feature would be best

It won’t matter. For the average user it will not be appealing, such niceties. It won’t help the “new logo” arriving in reality.
As long as they don’t sort out this business in terms of the existing LIRA sign, it seems all fairly rediculous to me. To pretend as if “a new sign for the turkish Lira” would have been something to invent at all, this is the initial mistake. And the story goes downhill from than on.

[Khaled Hosny]

It is NOT a new character. (!) There is the Lira sign existing at codepoint 20A4 ...

Yes, just like the Rupee, oh wait.

[Bert Vanderveen]

If ever there was case for contextual alternates, this one is: on a scale from 0 to 10 of course, from no prestige at all to the highest mark — and that could be tied to the S&P’s rating of Turkey!

(And why not apply the same principle to all other currency signs?)

[hrant]

Andreas, why wouldn't the Unicode Consortium approve
a new code-point for the currency of a sovereign state?

hhp

[evertype]

Hrant, the argument that this is a glyph variant of the existing Lira sign is not a particularly bad one.

But was anyone in Turkey using that anyway? It appears they just write TL.

[evertype]

In handwriting no one will be able to write this really in any way other than an L with two horizontal strokes, I suspect.

I guess it looks like half a euro. ;-P

[quadibloc]

@hrant:

> taken a British pound sign

!
Turkey is not part of the British Isles.
Lucky for Turkey.

Neither is Italy. But if Britain gets one bar, Italy two bars, and Turkey three, Turkey would still get its own codepoint.

Also, I'm pretty sure the relation to the Armenian dram sign is a coincidence. But possibly one so embarassing to Turkey that it will choose something else. Noting the finalists shown, it does seem that instead of being inspired by symbols for the lira and the pound, the chief goal in those submissions was to reflect the letters T and L. In the Latin script, which, of course, Turkey now uses.

I suppose using the Arabic script as a source of inspiration is right out for political reasons. And it's Iran, not Turkey, that would have the additional option of going back to cuneiform... ah, there is an "Old Turkic" alphabet, resembling runes, that they might consider.