Protype's 'Zael' font fades as its creator's eyesight does — Loeries 2024 double Gold

The typography industry is worth around US$13 million, yet illegal downloads and unpaid use deprive type designers of their income. One of them, Protype founder Ibrahim Hamdi, a leading Arabic typographer, was diagnosed with keratoconus and rapidly losing his eyesight; his fonts had been downloaded by many, but he never received the profits that could have funded his surgery.

Launch a real typeface, 'Zael, the Disappearing', whose letters lose clarity as its creator loses his eyesight — making piracy's cost visible in every character.

Leo Burnett Middle East, with production partner Prodigious, created 'Zael, the Disappearing': a working typeface whose letters lose clarity in step with Hamdi's deteriorating eyesight. Reading the font becomes the demonstration — every time the type degrades, the viewer sees what piracy takes from the person who made it.

The font took two Golds at the 2024 Loeries (Design Crafts – Typography and Graphic Design – General Design) plus further Loeries awards, a Bronze in Industry Craft at Cannes Lions 2024, a Gold at MMA Smarties MENA 2025 for social impact, and a place in the D&AD archive — giving the type industry a concrete symbol for why fonts deserve to be paid for.

The typography industry is a roughly US$13 million business where illegal downloads and unpaid use deprive type designers of their income. One of those designers is Ibrahim Hamdi, a leading Arabic typographer and founder of the Protype foundry, who was diagnosed with keratoconus — a condition that was rapidly stealing his eyesight.

Hamdi's fonts had been downloaded by many people, yet he never received the profits that could have funded his surgery. Leo Burnett Middle East, with production partner Prodigious, built a campaign around that injustice: a real typeface named 'Zael, the Disappearing', whose letters lose clarity exactly as its creator's eyesight does.

The font makes the abstract crime of piracy physical: every time a reader sees the type degrade, they are looking at what the industry's unpaid use takes from the people who make letters. Craft juries responded to the idea twice — it won Golds in both Typography and Graphic Design at the 2024 Loeries.

It also took a Bronze in Industry Craft at Cannes Lions 2024, a Gold at MMA Smarties MENA 2025 for social impact, and an entry in the D&AD archive — turning one designer's story into a lasting argument for paying for type.

Piracy is invisible by nature; a font that visibly decays gives the loss a form anyone can see.

It used the product itself — a typeface — as the medium, so the message and the craft were the same thing.

A single human story, a typographer losing his sight and his livelihood, made a systemic industry problem concrete.

Craft awards honored the idea twice, as typography and as graphic design, proving the concept was the work.

A systemic problem nobody feels becomes urgent when it wears one human face: font piracy is abstract until you can watch a typographer lose his eyesight and his livelihood at the same time.

Zael kept collecting recognition after its 2024 run — Golds at the Loeries, a Bronze at Cannes Lions, a Gold at MMA Smarties MENA 2025 and a D&AD archive entry. It later became the subject of a WARC effectiveness case study on font piracy in the EMEA region, giving foundries a shareable, award-backed example of what unpaid type costs.