The multi-talented Satyajit Ray

A long while back, I added Panther Panchali to my netflix queue, as I had heard of it being the most critically acclaimed film to come out of India. Though I'm still waiting to see it.. I ended up catching The Darjeeling Limited in the meantime, which included music by Satyajit Ray. I was intruged and decided to do a little more digging. Little did I know...

"Satyajit Ray was a man of multiple talents. Not only did he write the screenplays for all his films and score the music for all but his first five films, he was also a prolific, best selling author and a consummate artist." This wonderful website, SatyajitRayWorld.com that takes a detailed look at his life and works.

All of you Bengali type fans should check out his poster work, book jacket designs, and type design (scroll to the middle of the page - some great ones there!) AMAZING!!!

Back from Japan!

Holy cow, I've returned! Sorry, blog readers! I've been in the middle of a big life transition that has taken all of my concentration and energy aaand also away on a 2-week trip to Japan to visit a dear friend who is studying Japanese!

WOW, Japan was very visually overwhelming! Especially for someone who wants to look at every bit of signage and printed matter in the country. I took about a year of Japanese way back when, so I was already familiar with Hiragana and Katakana, but had no knowledge of Kanji. I think it was the first time I really thought about what an enormously difficult task Chinese type designers must have. I thought that nothing could be tougher than trying to fit in all of the dips and curves of Sinhala - but I must say, imagine dealing with this. And then try to use this popular Chinese search engine, Shohu. (here's an image, for those without Chinese language support) Wow. Welcome to the web for the rest of the world! It also reminded me of this post at the Ministry of Type on the difficulties of creating electronics interfaces due to the complexity of such characters.

Phew! Anyway, I could go on and on. But what I have been meaning to get to was that I found a few bits of Indic type while I was over there! So here they are! Some beautiful Bengali at an Indian restaurant, some Siddham script (Bonji in Japan) at a Buddhist temple, and what I believe to be Urdu, found at a park! So there you are! It's fun for me to see two different Asian scripts on one sign. It makes me giddy!

So once again, sorry for my extremely long absence. I hope to keep adding to this blog though, so don't give up on coming back! :)

Collection of Pakistani calligraphy

Just stumbled upon Calligraphy Islamic, which has lots of hidden gems! Above is an image from this interesting page, Muraqqa-e-Alif Laam Mim , which looks to be scans of a lettering guide by a calligrapher named Jacobus Michaeil. Also click on the Pakistani Calligraphers page for other interesting samples.

Chukki: Kannada typeface for the web updates!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the extreme lapse in posts! I know what will cheer you up... the wonderful update of Sanjay's Kannada typeface, Chukki! He was kind enough to contact me/us and share his amazing and beautiful process document pdf! It details his inspiration behind the project, his study in formal elements and technical restrictions, as well as type specimens using 9 and 7-pixel grids. He hopes we'll find it useful, and I'm sure we all will! Amazing!!!!

He also noted that he and his girlfriend are hoping to start an Indic type design studio! I sure hope they do - I'm sure they'll create many useful and beautiful works!

Postage of the British Raj

I tracked this seal down - and found a wealth of beautiful images. Check out the Royal Philatelic Society's page on the history of postage in the Jammu and Kashmir states of the British Raj. Geoffrey Hack's collection from the Princely States of India is also incredible! All sorts of beautiful old handwriting, seals, stamps, and printed type!

Arabic Letraset

Cool image from the fun "Arabic Script" book by Gabriel Mandel Khan, a great resource for Arabic calligraphy noobs like myself. Hopefully someday I'll find some Nastaliq and other South Asian styles to compare!

Hava Aney Dey film poster

I just saw Hava Aney Dey this past weekend, a part of the Global Film Initiative's "Global Lens 2008" and loved the poster - so why not post it here? Yeah, if you get the chance, check it out! And also go see Opera Jawa - that one looked great!

Creating a Kannada typeface for the web

Wow, today is a lucky day! Point your browsers toward Sanjay Basavaraju's blog, Chukki: Kannada typeface for the web. He is a post-grad student at the National Institute of Design in India, and his blog takes a peek at his process. Hopefully we can get him to update us on how his project is going!

How to write Punjabi letters

Hi again! I am experiencing another episode type dejavu! I opened up the library's copy of "Learn Punjabi in 30 Days" and found these familiar, very cool diagrams. Where had I seen these before? Haha. There are some famous commenters on that photo!

So, thanks again, South Asian Type Crew - great minds think alike! But yeah, more proof that we need to go to India and start documenting all of the REST of the type in India! I'll go get the boat ready.

Also: If any FontStruct-ers wanted to work off of those couple of Devanagari vowels I started, here's the link!
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/fontstructions/show/23375

"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!!!

Interesting, ribbon-like Urdu poetry

Calligraphy by Zoya Zaidi. These make me want to animate some 3-dimensional ribbons floating to create these words! Wowee!

More cool Tibetan calligraphy - Tashi Mannox

View the Tashi Mannox gallery here!

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!

Sirensongs' images from Nepal

Above are images from Sirensongs' flickr collection, which includes loads of colorful images from her travels throughout South Asia. At the moment, she is located in Nepal, where elections have just been held in which the Maoist party won a majority of votes, ensuring the end of the Nepalese monarchy. She has also witnessed firsthand the clash between the local authorities and pro-Tibetan protesters. Her blog, Feringhee: The India Diaries is a really great resource and one of my favorite blogs. Check it out!

P.S. Star Trek fans - yes, the Ferengi got their name from the Arabic/Persian/Urdu term meaning European traders/foreigners/Westerners.

FontStruct updates...

Hi. If anyone out there has started working on any Indic scripts in FontStruct - lemme know! I'd love to find out what "scale" you're using, in order to leave room for vowel maatras etc. I had just spent a bunch of time starting this alphabet, but I think I made it too large on the grid. Sigh. Maybe I'll just make designs in illustrator!

Building the collection...

more book covers!

Amazing Tibetan calligraphy by Nathanael Archer

Wow. You must check out the calligraphy work of Nathanael Archer. The finished pieces , doodles, and sketches are equally inspiring!

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.

Indic fonts for Indica

Another cop-out posting on my part... but I've found a few more type samples at Summit India, a company that produced Indica, "The first implementation of Indian languages on MS Windows™ and Apple Macintosh in India, Indica is used by all major newspapers, magazines and other publishers across the country and is considered the leading Indian languages software in the world."

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.