Celebrating with Planet Read and SLS - Same Language Subtitling

Well folks, believe it or not, I've been accepted to the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading!!! In a few months, if everything falls into place, I'll be in England, devoting nearly all my time to learning, research, and the development of a typeface from some amazingly knowledgeable people. And hopefully, the beginning of a lifetime of dedication, improvement, new experiences, and challenges. Sounds pretty good, eh?

I've been thinking a lot since I heard the news, about how big of a change this will be. I was really frightened at first (maybe just because of my recent economics encounter?) But today, I was remembering something that inspired me SO much, back when I was just starting to learn Devanagari. After watching a bunch of Hindi videos on youtube with English subtitles, I was wondering if I'd be able to find videos captioned in Hindi, so that I could better understand the pronunciation of the letters. Turns out some very smart and good-hearted people have already thought of this. And it is being implemented in India as we speak, helping to improve the reading skills of millions of young readers - it's called Same Language Subtitling, and is being promoted, studied, and developed by the amazing people at Planet Read.

I'll let you read more about it at their site - it really says it all. (And feel free to donate! Of course!!) But it just struck me as such a simple but amazing way to improve the lives of so many people. And I bet there's a lot more that we can do, using design and typography, combined with an innovative use of the existing technology and systems in developing parts of the world. I guess now I just have to join the ranks of people trying to figure that all out! That sort of motivation will wash away any fears I have. This coming year should be a good start down that path! Wish me luck!

And in the meantime, enjoy some SLS.


*oh, P.S. - our amazing friend Deven Sansare got in contact with the director of "The Last Calligraphers" film and is sad to report that "the project was shelved because the Senior Editor passed away and his son is not committed or interested in taking the newspaper forward. So all they have is the trailer." - How incredibly sad. As Deven put it so hauntingly, "Another piece of history becomes history."

Nice film title treatment: Abhijan (The Expedition)

Love this! I haven't seen the film, but hooray again for Satyajit Ray!

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!

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!

Free online font editor - that allows Indic Scripts!

Sorry to anyone who regularly stops here for the latest and greatest tidbits of Indic script goodness - I haven't posted in a while and have left you starving for type! (A week is a long time in internet-time.)

Luckily, I have a real cool piece of news! Floating around the design "blogosphere" this morning was a new free, online font editor from FontShop called "FontStruct". Users can rate, share, and download their font creations! (And they're YOURS, under Creative Commons licensing.) But the best part, and most relevant to this blog, is that they offer non-latin character sets!!!

Arabic, Devenagari [sic], Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, and Sinhala are all options! I don't know much else about it yet, as I will spend my evening tinkering with it, but I'm sure it'll be my new favorite toy! Woohoo!

Holi hai!

In celebration of Holi, the Festival of Colors, I thought I would post images of some of the vibrant and funny e-cards representing the festival. Also above on the right is an image from renowned calligrapher, Achyut Palav. Some actual images of the colorful day can be found here at BBC Hindi.

Save Kannada

So in an effort to back-track through my posts and try to insert more contextual/credit information, I found that the Kannada newspaper article had been linked to by this site, savekannada.googlepages.com. Me having type on the brain, the first thing I noticed was that the Kannada font used on the site was incredibly legible, as opposed to most Indian-language websites I've browsed. I'm thinking "The creators really understand how to find/make the best Kannada font for the screen! They must really want to save Kannada!"

So, when I clicked on the English translation link, I was able to read the sad story on the page. It really was written by people hoping to save the integrity of their language in the digital age. It turns out that Microsoft has continually published software with numerous errors in its translation and usage of Kannada script and ignored programmers'/consumers' complaints about the product. But to make matters worse, Microsoft and the government of Karnataka have signed an agreement to "implement e-governance and paper-less government offices in the state." Which means that they'd be stuck using software that has butchered their native language with no remorse.

It has always confused and bothered me that the web has been SO incredibly dominated by English.. I'm only just beginning to read about the complexities of Unicode and the inputting of non-latin scripts on the internet, let alone using a complex script in Microsoft Word and other basic programs. This kind of 21st century cultural imperialism hopefully can be reduced and counter-acted with the brilliant programmers in the open source movement.. most of which are probably living in Bangalore, native speakers of Kannada. Ha, I'll stop now before I sound like a total idiot. I must read more!! Anyway, check out the site!

digital age!

after struggling to read the tiny, unsuitable-for-screen devanagari type in the lessons at livemocha, this design is quite refreshing! From Soft Fonts. I might have to buy this!

Writing systems map

From UPenn