After graduating in 1974, Tim Holloway trained in type drawing with the Linotype group and joined Walter Tracy at the London-based company, which was busy supplying the Middle East newspaper market. There he became intrigued by the 'simplified Arabic' issue and the emerging possibilities for adapting calligraphic styles to computer typesetting, in particular the diagonal-joining Arabic ruqah and Urdu nastaliq styles.

Tim ventured into freelance work, assisting Matthew Carter with Greek fonts and drawing up logos and corporate alphabets for various design groups. In Lausanne he met the Lebanese typefounder Georges Dib under whose guidance he extended Dib's traditional naskh type for BobstGraphic and attempted a simplified version. Following a collaboration with Fiona Ross on Bengali he was invited to contribute to the development of Linotype's Urdu nastaliq fonts and system. The design of Sheeraz (1986-7) was followed by the more complex Qalmi (1994), involving expert help from a Pakistani calligrapher and an Indian software engineer.

Continuing study of historical calligraphic material resulted in a traditional naskh, Karim (Postscript 1993; OpenType 2005) and the experimental design Markazi (ATypI award 2001). An associate designer of Tiro Typeworks, he has collaborated with John Hudson and Fiona Ross on a number of projects including Adobe Arabic (TDC award 2006), Adobe Thai and recently, for Dalton Maag: Vodafone Hindi (TDC award 2008).