My conversation with Kailash was a fruitful one, leading to extensive research material and deeper insights into the intricacies of designing Indic fonts. One of the significant resources he shared was a talk by Girish Dalvi on the overwhelming influence of industrialisation and foreign design standards on Indian typography.
Dalvi’s discussion focused on how India’s design landscape has become predominantly Latin-first or Europe-first, an issue visible in even the most everyday elements, such as signage. In India, Latin typography is frequently given precedence as the primary attention-grabbing element, often sidelining Indic scripts or reducing them to secondary roles. Dalvi recounted instances where brands and companies approach them with Latin logo designs and then request an Indic adaptation, reinforcing a backward design approach. He emphasised that to preserve cultural identity and linguistic diversity, designers should adopt an Indic-first approach in branding and design.
In another resource, a video by Maithili Shingre on the design process behind the Jaini typeface, I gained insights into how type designers document and revive traditional typefaces. The video walks through the detailed steps involved in creating Jaini, starting with a deep study of ancient manuscripts and scriptures to understand the historical significance and unique features of the script. Shingre’s process involved dissecting the orthographic rules governing the language, carefully identifying distinct letterforms, and ensuring that the final typeface accurately embodies the cultural nuances and linguistic heritage of the script. The video was insightful in illustrating how much attention to detail is required to maintain the integrity of traditional scripts when digitizing them, and the critical role that understanding orthography plays in this process.
Another enlightening resource was a video titled “Reclaiming Peruvian Typography: A Decolonising Read.” The talk carried a powerful message on how colonial legacies continue to impact the typographic and cultural landscape of Peru. The speaker, Juan Villanueva, examined the long-lasting imprint of colonialism on Peruvian typography, emphasizing the need to reclaim and decolonize the visual narrative of the region. Villanueva argues that the dominant Eurocentric narrative has overshadowed the authentic visual culture of Peru, and his work aims to reintroduce the indigenous visual and cultural heritage into mainstream design. His statement, “Typography still has a long way to go in challenging the dominant Eurocentric narrative,” resonated with my project’s objective of preserving and promoting non-Latin scripts like Devanagari. Villanueva’s emphasis on the importance of understanding cultural context while designing fonts aligns with the broader goal of ensuring that script designs authentically represent their linguistic and cultural roots.
These resources collectively provided me with a more profound understanding of the challenges and opportunities in designing Indic fonts, particularly the importance of orthography, cultural authenticity, and adopting an Indic-first design approach. They also highlighted the global relevance of such issues, showing how similar challenges are faced by other cultures in reclaiming and preserving their typographic heritage against the pressures of a dominant Western design narrative.
Based on these insights I made some tweaks to my two ideas. Also, we have a post-fieldwork discussion with Bryan and Lizzie and so I decided to hear their thoughts on my word so far and make changes accordingly.
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