Designing for Arabic: lessons from real RTL work

Flipping a layout takes an afternoon. Making it feel like it was designed in Arabic takes longer, and the difference is entirely in the details.

Things that break

• Letter-spacing tuned for Latin, which pulls Arabic letterforms apart
• Icons with direction baked in, so the arrow now points the wrong way
• Numerals switched everywhere, including where the client uses Western ones

What we do now

Type is chosen per script rather than scaled from one family, and every directional icon is mirrored by rule rather than by hand. Arabic copy is written, not translated.