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Home / Resources / History of Devanagari Letterforms / Digital Typefaces
Design Resource

History of Devanagari Letterforms

Evolutionary of Devnagri Typeface
by
Chitra Gohad
IDC, IIT Bombay
Digital Typefaces
 
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The art director of ITR, M. W. Gokhale provided a stimulated digital font catalogue on print. The sample text used in the ITR font catalogue is the, the quick brown fox suggested by Wakankar and created by Pandit (1968).

A type catalogue published by them in 1972 contains 21 typefaces and text samples are provided in 10,12,16,18, and 24 points; whereas some display typefaces samples are provided in 30,36,48 and 72 points. M. W. Gokhale arranges font alphabetically (Aabha, Aakansha, Abhishek, Ajinkya, Ajit, Akshar etc.) 

CDAC provides 109 fonts most of them are available in normal, bold and italics. The CDAC font catalogue is arranged randomly for the samples; where alphabetical arrangement in the end suggests the usage scenario for the font (DV-Dhruv, DV- Kishor, DV- Alankar etc.).

They also provide the purpose based grouping of fonts. The classes are follows:

• Body Text - Books, Magazines, Newspaper, Advertisements, Greetings, Directories, etc.
• Headline -  Books, Magazines, Newspaper, Advertisements.
• Display -  Posters and Signboards, Hoarding, LED display, TV/Video.

And the further study was proposed by R. K. Joshi (2005).

The proposed categorization of fonts are as follows:
• Fonts Based on Indian Historical Landmarks - such as Brahmi letters, Gupta letters,    Peshwa letters etc.
• Computer Technology Font - Dot matrix, Digital fonts using formats such as postscript,    true type, open type.
• Calligraphy Fonts - Handwriting based, calligraphic style of script
• Decorative Fonts - Fancy decorative, pattern based, form based, cursive calligraphy

Need of Variety of Typefaces:

Scripts and letterforms are important aspects of Languages. Typefaces are not mere chunks of text or information; they have a personality of their own. They communicate not just with the content they carry but also with their form. They convey a specific message and a typographer should make sure that they convey the appropriate message. Designer should consider the user group such as children, adults, students, men, women etc. and purpose of designing like advertisements, publishing, identity etc.

Devanagari or any Indian scripts, they are no doubt very readable, but a careful observation is needed regarding symmetry, structure, point sizes and alignment in them. The new technology of lettering and composing where a designer can create different sizes and dimensions should meet the need of typeface design and variety in them as per the purpose.

  • Introduction to Devanagari
  • Picto-Phonetic Script
  • Grammatic Tradition
  • Vowels and Consonants
  • Findings Origin from Vedas
  • Experiments in Type-form
  • Characteristics of Script
  • Anatomy of Letters
  • Letterforms for Typewriter
  • Digital Typefaces
  • Links
  • Contact Details
  • Comments and Feedback
  • Credits

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