Seven above, one below
A ghaf tree drawn as seven strata over a single unbroken root — the seven emirates resting on one taproot, which is the oldest reading of the tree of life there is.
The idea
The ghaf is the national tree of the UAE and the reason anything lives where it grows: a flat, layered canopy that shelters what gathers under it, and a taproot that runs far deeper than the tree stands tall. The mark keeps both halves.
Seven horizontal strata, countable at a glance, sit on one continuous vertical axis that passes through every one of them and carries on below the last. Nothing is stacked on the mark to say "Emirati" — the seven are the structure, and removing one would collapse the drawing.
No flag, no falcon, no crest. Those are protected marks and borrowed authority; this is a tree a family would actually sit under.
Lockups
Primary · horizontal
Stacked
Bilingual · Arabic set 1.12× for optical parity
Mark alone · avatar, stamp, app icon
Clear space & reproduction
Clear space = ¼ the width of the mark, on all four sides. Stated as a ratio so it survives any scale.
Reversed
One colour, solid black
20 mm wide · 300 dpi
Small sizes
Seven strata need roughly 28 px of height before their counters survive. Below 32 px the mark reduces to three strata on the same axis — the same rule, fewer readings of it. This is a drawn variant, not the logo scaled down.
Palette
Two colours plus neutrals. Built in OKLCH so lightness is perceptual, which is why the ratios hold without auditing: ink on paper 16.5:1, ghaf on paper 10.8:1, white on ghaf 11.7:1, brass on paper 3.3:1 (large text and UI only, never body copy).
Typography
Shaikha Al Mutawa
Jost · 400 · tracked 0.22em · uppercase
Geometric, Bauhaus-descended, and quiet enough to carry a personal name without performing. Wide tracking is doing the work, not the typeface.
شيخة المطوع
Almarai · 400
تُضبط العربية بمقاس أكبر بنسبة ١٢٪ لتستوي بصريًا مع الحروف اللاتينية.
Almarai's even monoline stroke matches Jost's geometry; set 12% larger so the two scripts read at the same optical weight.
Body text is Inter and IBM Plex Sans Arabic. All four are SIL Open Font Licence — embeddable, self-hostable, and legal to hand to a printer.
Rules
- Use the horizontal lockup by default
- Reduce to the three-stratum icon below 32 px
- Ghaf green, ink, or reversed white — nothing else
- Keep ¼-width clear space on all sides
- Arabic and Latin never at the same point size
- No gradient, no shadow, no outline
- Never redraw the strata count — seven is the idea
- Never stretch, rotate or arc the lockup
- Never place the mark on a busy photograph
- Never re-set the wordmark in a live font
Alternates considered
B · branched ghaf, seven tips
The same tree drawn as it actually branches. Warmer and more literal; loses the countable seven at a glance.
C · the rooted I
Type only: the I of SHAIKHA is the one letter that breaks the baseline, and carries on as a taproot. For a fashion-register personal brand with no icon at all.