NUBAYIN Studio makes film, music and immersive work. Its name is the Arabic نُبَيِّن (nubayyin): “we make clear”. Everything in this kit is the studio holding still so that one thing can be made clear: a title in its own colour, a word in its own dots, a face in sharp light.

Version 1.0, locked on 8 November 2026. Approved: the seven foundation decisions (D1 to D7); the six additions this kit introduced (pull then point, the frame bar, the reader layer, the review stamp, straight-cut media glyphs and the studio ident); the house line, “We make clear”; the label (K8) and the label seam (K9). Awaiting review: the first shot list (K7).

Who it is for

Serve the general audience first and Arab audiences second. Every element passes the two-reader test: it is beautiful and clear for anyone, and it gives Arab readers something only they can fully read, such as the letter in the mark, the dots, the harakat or the name of the blue. Arabic is never decoration for the first reader and never a translation for the second.

Content fundamentals

• Voice: reverent, cinematic, defiant, joyful. Defiance comes through beauty and joy. Reverence comes through restraint. The work is shown before anything is said about it.
• Write short, plain sentences. No exclamation marks, no hype words, no emoji. Name the work, the people and the place. House lines: “Show the work first. Then say what we believe.” “We make clear, so faces are lit.”
• The name. Always NUBAYIN in capitals. “NUBAYIN Studio” for the company, “A NUBAYIN UNIVERSE PRODUCT” as the endorsement on titles and apps (never on a person), “℗ 2026 NUBAYIN Studio” on releases. The Arabic name always carries full tashkeel: نُبَيِّن.
• English leads on public surfaces. Arabic is written by a native writer and never machine-translated. Right-to-left layouts get the same care as left-to-right ones.
• No religious text, ever, and the faith is never named. No verses or religious quotations on any surface, and no reading of the mark, the name or a title that leans on one. The studio welcomes all faiths, all backgrounds and all ethnicities. The ruling governs the studio’s own voice; an artist’s own work follows the artist.
• AI never fakes humanity. AI may build environments and work with words. NUBAYIN never uses it to make a person’s face, voice, handwriting or performance. Across the label, anyone shown has consented, and AI is always disclosed.
• No dark patterns. No false urgency, no manipulated numbers.

Visual foundations

• Two surfaces. On the Cinema theme canvas is kohl, for what we show: film, music, title acts. On the Reading theme canvas is gypsum, for what we explain: about, press, credits, long text. A page may alternate full-width bands. Set primary text in text, secondary in text-2, metadata and captions in text-3. Panels sit on surface. There are no shadows.
• The lāzaward rule. Lāzaward (لازورد, the lapis that gave English its azure) marks what has been made clear: accent for links, focus for the focus ring, point for the mark’s point and the harakat. It never fills a button, a tab or a selected state, never glows and never forms a gradient. Selected states are an ink underline or the rhombic point. drench (a full-bleed lāzaward-600 band with on-drench text) is allowed for one studio moment per page.
• Type. display (Kufam) sets titles, labels and the name in both scripts. text (Noto Serif) sets reading text. arabic (Noto Naskh Arabic) sets Arabic reading text. Set Arabic 1.12 times the Latin size at the language boundary, never letter-space it, and give it a line height of 1.4 in display and 1.8 in text. Never fake a bold or an italic (font-synthesis: none). Uppercase labels take +0.08 to +0.12em; Arabic is never uppercased or tracked.
• Geometry. radius-0 on every corner: frames are sharp cuts. radius-avatar is for social avatar crops only. Space on the space-* scale, bands apart by section-gap, reading text at most 65 characters wide. Heroes and title cards use frame-scope (2.39:1); posters frame-poster (2:3); portraits and social posts frame-portrait (4:5); video frame-wide (16:9).
• The point. One rhombus, 9 × 7.5 units on the 5:6 slope, cut from the mark. It is the eyebrow marker, the list bullet, the “now” indicator and the selected state. It is never drawn as a circle.
• Motion: pull, then point. What is revealed resolves from blur(14px) at 0.6 opacity to sharp, over dur-reveal with ease-reveal, once, on first entry. Its lāzaward point is absent during the pull and appears as a hard cut when the pull ends: no fade, no scale. Under reduced motion the final frame is simply there. Blur only ever moves; it never rests as a texture.
• The frame bar. A 44px kohl-1000 bar carrying “A NUBAYIN UNIVERSE PRODUCT” in Kufam 500 at 11px, tracked +0.14em. It sits in the same place on every title page and never takes an act’s colour.
• Imagery. Faces are lit, and the light has a source. Real photographs of real people, with consent and credit. Environment plates may be AI-generated and are always labelled as plates. Never silhouettes against light, god rays, haze, lens flares, cosmic skies, religious objects or architecture, or place clichés (blue doors on white walls, dunes at sunset, souks, amber dust).
• Title acts. The studio keeps the frame and each title brings its own ground, ink and type. The ink reaches 4.5:1 on the ground, the ground sits at least 0.10 OKLab from lazaward-600, and nothing of the act leaks into the frame bar, navigation or footer.
• Artists. Each artist keeps their own world. NUBAYIN adds only the label strip at the foot of a release, in the artist’s ink, and never makes an artist look like NUBAYIN. An artist’s released work appears as released wherever NUBAYIN shows it.
• Accessibility. WCAG 2.2 AA everywhere. Every text token holds at least 5.4:1 on its grounds in both themes. Focus is always visible as the focus ring. Motion respects prefers-reduced-motion. Film and audio ship with captions and transcripts, and nothing autoplays with sound.

The mark

ن, the first letter of نُبَيِّن, drawn as an open book with its point above. Use nubayin-mark.svg (Display) from 28px tall and nubayin-mark-micro.svg from 14px to 27px. In two colours the pages are text and the point is point; Micro sizes, photographs and lāzaward grounds take one colour. Keep the point’s width (9 units) clear on every side. Never outline it, round its corners, fill the pages with lāzaward, rotate it, mirror it in right-to-left layouts or draw a shape around it. The name lockup (NUBAYIN and نُبَيِّن) is set in Kufam as a sketch until the wordmark is drawn.

Iconography

No icon set is part of the identity. Label controls in words. The only pictograms are the mark and the rhombic point. Where a media control needs a glyph (play, pause, captions, close), draw it from straight cuts on the mark’s 10-unit grid in currentColor, and never mix in an outside icon library.

Reading the kit

The sections cover the studio platform, the brand guide, title acts, imagery, motion and sound, the two scripts, the label and universe, touchpoints, platforms, the studio site and the decision record. The cards show every component and touchpoint live, at true proportions where size matters. The kit is built from the repository nubayin-brand-design-system, which is the source of truth.