Tiny Telugu and Tamil Type

Hi, all! I've recently uploaded some quick snapshots from bibles found at the Minneapolis Public Library. Both included some of the smallest Indic type I've seen so far, as well as some interesting biblical maps with hand-lettering! Here is the Telugu set, and here the Tamil set. Not sure if this is of any interest to anyone, but I thought I'd share! You also get to see my fingernails! What fun!

I've also posted some Bengali script diagrams in a similar style as the Gurmukhi one posted earlier!

Google Books and Internet Archive: Indic script pdf books

Due to my horrible documentation practices, I had to search the online library catalogs to find the books I used for my flickr collection. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon .pdf excerpts (or even in some cases, entire books!) hosted by Google books and the Internet Archive!

I'm not sure how these were all scanned, if by man or machine, but hooray! (Yeesh, after working as a documenter/scanner in my college's media library for two years, I have an even deeper respect for the people who put the time and effort into projects like this! -- maybe I should honor them by making sure to properly cite things from now on. Sigh.)

So here you go, kiddos! A few fine examples!

A Kannada-English school dictionary, hosted by Internet Archive.
A Progressive Grammar of the Malayalam Language, at Google Books.
Sinhalese, self-taught, at Internet Archive.

I reccomend searching for other Indian languages and topics at Internet Archive - there is some good stuff!

Kannada and Malayalam images

Nothing too amazing to report today, but I'm going to try to get in the habit of more frequent posts, even if they are simple like this! Sound good, readers?

I've just added some dark, hastily taken photos of Kannada and Malayalam type and lettering from the few books I've been able to find on the subject during recent library visits. If you click on "all sizes", there are much larger - and hopefully slightly helpful - images. So there you go! :)

Greetings! My Flickr type samples

There is no good excuse for my absence. So I will just start back up again without one! My apology to you all: My flickr type collection. Small, but I will keep adding to it! So far, just Devanagari type images I snapped quickly from books at a couple of libraries!

"Strange Conjuncts" type resurfaces!

Holy smokes. I could barely believe my eyes! I opened one of the few South Asian language books at the Minneapolis Public Library, A Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language - and lo and behold, our favorite "strange conjuncts" mystery type shows up! So now my dears, feast your eyes on the beautiful forms! If anyone wants larger scans, or scans of all of the conjuncts, shoot me an email. AMAZING!!!

very old Tamil type

"One of the oldest printed samples of a Tamil foundry type in Europe."

* Image by Fernando de Mello Vargas, U of Reading graduate and designer of the award-winning Tamil typeface, Frida

See more here. I love piggybacking off of the University of Reading type design students! Huzzah!

Bengali handwriting of Rabindranath Tagore

Here is a peek at the handwriting of the famous Bengali poet, artist, composer, novelist, and Nobel prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore. Read more of the above poem, Fireflies, here. Some additional samples of his writing can be found here. And more of his handwriting/doodles here. I especially like this one.

More scripture images

Sorry again folks, I'm going through a rough time right now and haven't been able to put any time into this endeavor. Hopefully things will change soon, though. In the meantime, here are some more images from that scripture site. This time, Panjabi, Oriya, Telugu, and Urdu.

Strange Devanagari conjuncts

I don't have enough knowledge of Hindi or Sanskrit to be able to explain all of these strange conjunct forms, but they sure are interesting to look at!! "CallingTo", a flickr user, has uploaded a bunch of scans of strange letterforms. Check them out! I should probably hunt this fellow down to learn more!

And if anyone can make it, in a few hours, you should check out Typography Day 2008. I'm on the wrong continent. ... er... sub-continent? Also, if anyone wants to take over my job, but split my salary so that I can do this full-time, let me know. Thanks!

Gurmukhi typography

Clicking through the script categories on the right, I realized that I have been neglecting Gurmukhi! It seems like it's one of the harder scripts to find online, though. So, here it is! My small Gurmukhi collection! There are some interesting hand-drawn display-type script samples from this Sikh heritage site, attributed to the late Dr. Channan Singh Chan. Two other examples are from here.

Oriya / Odia books online

So far, I've found that Oriya has been a really tricky script to find online. This great site, Odia, has downloadable pdf booklets in the Oriya language (where the text above has come from) and links to other Oriya content on the net, including fonts and news sites. It's really amazing to see the script en masse on the book pages - such interesting repetitious curved forms! I think I need to view all of the languages in book format more often to help my American eyes get used to such seemingly complex letterfoms!

Hindi palm leaf manuscript

Wonderful samples of Devanagari script on palm leaf manuscripts! 1 2 3 4 Interesting non-connecting characters and some strange vowel maatras.
Hosted by Columbia University, where these resources were also linked: Resources for S and SE Asian Languages and Cultures, SARAI, and SAJA.

Evolution of Bengali script

"The modern script was formalized in 1778 when it was first typeset by Charles Wilkins. ...

Clusters of consonants are represented by different and sometimes quite irregular characters; thus, learning to read the script is complicated by the sheer size of the full set of characters and character combinations, numbering about 500. While efforts at standardizing the script for the Bengali language continue in such notable centers as the Bangla Academies (unaffiliated) at Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Kolkata (West Bengal, India), it is still not quite uniform as yet, as many people continue to use various archaic forms of letters, resulting in concurrent forms for the same sounds. Among the various regional variations within this script, only the Assamese and Bengali variations exist today in the formalized system.

It seems likely that the standardization of the script will be greatly influenced by the need to typeset it on computers. The large alphabet can be represented, with a great deal of ingenuity, within the ASCII character set, omitting certain irregular conjuncts. Work has been underway since around 2001 to develop Unicode fonts, and it seems likely that it will split into two variants, traditional and modern." - Wikipedia article on Bengali Script

The image above and some more info are located here.

Sinhalese palm-leaf manuscripts

In order to better understand the origins of the letterforms of South Asian scripts, I've been searching for the earliest writings and printing samples I can find. In contrast to the calligraphic forms of handwritten Sanskrit, the Dravidian scripts of South South Asia are distinctively curved and don't seem to have been originally created by same writing implement. So I was delighted to find a GREAT article about the creation of palm-leaf manuscripts - and how Sinhalese was written onto the leaves!

" The scribe, usually a monk or a scholar, uses a stylus for writing. The scribe places the leaf strip on the palm of hand, as it is easier to gauge the pressure needed for writing. The letters are written from left to right and the scribe uses the parallel lines of the veins of the leaf to guide him to write straight."

"The letters etched with the stylus are colourless and therefore difficult to read. So it has to be ‘inked’ in a special manner. ... Leaf surface is rubbed with a wad of soft cotton cloth dipped in the resinous oil and ... with charcoal. ... The letters on the palm leaf then appears dark black and the words are distinct and easy to read."

I assume that using more curved forms was the best way to prevent the leaf from cracking along the veins. I'll dig into this further!

Long before papermaking made its journey to India, religious and scientific texts were written on these amazing portable manuscripts. I'm sure you'll see many more here as I begin to track down the origins of other scripts!

Images and other links here!

Type designs from MA students at the University of Reading

I love how the type design community is small enough that almost everyone is connected in some way! So, I was looking through flickr images the other day and I found photos from a group of students who were students at the University of Reading MA in type design. - I clicked through some links, and ultimately found specimens of the typefaces they designed. And lo and behold, my teacher Nicole Dotin was in their class! And, to make things even dandier, three of the students had designed typefaces that had accompanying South Asian faces!!!

Above is Surat, a Gujarati design by David Brezina.
Vesper, a Devanagari typeface by Rob Keller.
and Frida, a Tamil typeface by Fernando de Mello Vargas.

Absolutely beauuutiful designs! Download the pdfs to get a closer look!
Also check out the previous class - someone made an Arabic face, another chose Tibetan!

Hail Mary Handwriting

Love 'em or hate 'em, Christian missionaries and scholars have left us with a wealth of language documentation. This archive contains hundreds of language samples - and to my delight - most are handwritten!! I'd love to get my hands on as much everyday, handwritten bits as possible - if anyone could point me towards more, I'd be eternally grateful.

*English/Anglo-Canadian designers' take on Devanagari

I read on Geotypografika that there were a lot of non-latin typefaces chosen as Type Directors Club best type designs of the year. Could it be that maybe there just aren't many non-latin typefaces in existence? (Due to many sad reasons) - And maybe the fact that our economy is going to the shitter - combined with global warming awareness - has helped us to realize that we Americans are not alone on the planet? I don't know. Why am I so bitter today? Anyway, YAY for this typeface, Vodafone Hindi. I hope I can make Erin Hindi sometime soon.

*I erroneously labeled this as a Dutch design! So sorry! As John (one of the designers!) comments below, this was designed by Tiro.

Kannada online newspaper article

So, while image-searching for Kannada type examples, I found this online newspaper image. It is a clipping from the prajavaniepaper.com "e-paper". What a great way to gain insight into typographic India! Also check out sanjevani.com for some nice Kannada type.

nice old page

another nice example of old type.. I think I like the bottom style the best

world scripts goldmine

phew!! This scripture site has loads of hundred-year-old bible pages in native languages from all over the world. It's so great to see actual old printed specimens of these languages! I think I saved about 60 pictures from that site. Check it out, for real. (above are Nepali, Bengali, and Tamil)