"The Coke side of life" in South Asia

So this is a wee bit late, but did anyone catch the special "Coke around the world" cans and bottles that came out during the Olympics? I'm not sure if it was an America only thing, but I remembered one day going to the store and having to choose between a Bengali, Sinhala, or Devanagari-scripted bottle! It was strange and wonderful and kind of disturbing all at the same time!

So I went to the Beijing 2008 Coke site in order to see the other world-script bottles available.. and found some decorative little flash animations displaying bits of architecture and flora and fauna of the respective countries. And strange little discriptions.. apparently, "The Coke side of life in Bangladesh" consists of "Monsoons, cyclones, Bengal tigers, and never a dull moment!" I found it confusing and almost offensive or something. I guess I don't know why I'd expect anything different.

But anyway, above is a sampling of some South Asian Coke-related things (one being a Malayalam Coke protest poster -- due to Coke's exploitation of water resources, pesticide content, and their pollution). Also, a bottle of Thums Up!, a popular cola that was bought by Coke in 1993.

Of the many, many things I should probably eliminate from my life, I suppose I should add Coke to my list..

Dan and Paul's Devanagari MATD type creations!

Remember that time a crazy girl from Minnesota started a South Asian type blog and then only posted 4 times in 3 months? Yeah, I do too. And it was so frustrating!!! Hopefully I can be forgiven though, before I'm declared dead...

Feast your eyes on some beautiful new typefaces created by the dedicated, talented U of Reading MATD students Dan Reynolds and Paul Hunt!!! They were kind enough to send me samples of their typefaces, which I am still fine-toothed-combing-over, trying to learn from their genius! Hee hee.

Dan's Martel typeface, features both Devanagari and Latin characters (with a plethora of diacritical marks for use with other European languages!) and was designed to live up to the great expectations of small-print newspaper design, including multiple weights and condensed characters. He paid close attention to stroke thickness and character height in each script in order to harmonize the over-all text color, making a seamless language integration! Ahhh!

I would describe Paul's Latin Grandia and Devanagari Gandhara typefaces as beautifully funky-chunky. He describes them as "Simple character construction with calligraphic flair." I'm not too great at writing. But bravo to him! His generous, squarish counters and bold serifs make for clear and distinct forms and beautiful negative space! He also created an generous library of beautiful conjuct characters! Ahhh again!

Anyway, please visit the sites of these two kind fellows - I'm sure they would love to talk type with anyone who is willing, and would love feedback and insight from regular Devanagari font users!!

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Also, if any of you dear readers have a relevant personal site and wish for it to be included in my new list of "Type Friends" links on the right-hand side of the page, I'll gladly link to you! Please send me an email with your site!! I promise to be a better blog friend from now on.