Handcraft for the digital : Type design from India

The world is filled with letters. In today’s digitalised society, typefaces (shape and style of the letters) are more important than ever.
Catering for urges to express, to deliver, to record, and to understand each other; a typeface can be a profoundly expressive yet beautiful tool that nurtures us humans like bread.

This exhibition introduces a challenge about a typeface in India; a design integrating indigenous culture and innovation to present a new value in our society.

The “Typecraft Initiative” was launched in 2011 by an Indian designer. Their workshop-style activities involve craftswomen from various parts of the country to collaborate to create digital typefaces in Indic and Latin scripts. It takes a long time to hold a workshop which fits each area’s characteristics with a broad range of craftspeople creating tattoos, embroidery, ceramics, and paintings. This effort pursuing possibilities in design enables craftswomen to expand their work into new areas by marketing these typographies as digital fonts. It also creates an activity to protect Indian craftsmanship in the future from disappearing into waves of modernisation.

This epic project turns charming indigenous Indian culture from various backgrounds into new fonts.
The letters woven by craftswomen’s hands are nurtured by their lives in India.

ATELIER MUJI