El Messiri
Type with Purpose
Good typography guides attention, improves understanding, and makes communication effortless.
The Anatomy of a Typeface
By FontSide · June 2026
Every typeface is a system of decisions — about stroke contrast, x-height, spacing, and rhythm. The best ones feel invisible: you stop seeing the letters and start hearing the voice behind them. That transparency is the hardest thing to design.
A high x-height opens up the counters and makes small text breathe. Tight tracking pulls a headline together; loose tracking gives a caption room to exhale. None of these choices are accidents — they are arguments about how reading should feel.
Uppercase
Lowercase
Numerals
Symbols
Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/el-messiri 2. Import in App
import '@fontsource-variable/el-messiri/wght.css'; 3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "El Messiri Variable", sans-serif;
} Google Fonts CDN
Use Google's CDN to embed the fonts directly via HTML.
HTML <head>
<!-- Please select at least one weight and style --> Fontsource CDN
Skip the build step by adding this directly to your global CSS file.
Global CSS
/* el-messiri-latin-wght-normal */
@font-face {
font-family: "El Messiri Variable";
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
font-weight: 100 900;
src: url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/fontsource/fonts/el-messiri:vf@latest/latin-wght-normal.woff2)
format("woff2-variations");
} Background & Story
El Messiri is a modern Arabic typeface family designed by Mohamed Gaber (Arabic) that began with Jovanny Lemonad's Latin and Cyrillic typeface Philosopher. The Arabic started with the concept of a curvy Arabic typeface inspired by the beauty of Naskh and drawn as if with a brush instead of the traditional bamboo pen. The idea took form with wide counters that improve readability at smaller text sizes, and has subtle details that make it a great display face at larger sizes. El Messiri current comes in 4 weights (Light, Regular, SemiBold and Bold) and the Arabic component has a wide glyph set that supports the Arabic, Farsi and Urdu languages.
The font has been upgraded to a variable font with a weight axis (Regular to Bold) in August 2021.
To contribute, see github.com/Gue3bara/El-Messiri
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource-variable/el-messiri Designed by
Mohamed Gaber, Jovanny Lemonad
Links
License
OFL-1.1