Name: Sachit Shyam

Guide: Prof. G. V. Sreekumar

Course: Interaction

Designing a Gurmukhi typeface

There was a time before the machines in Punjab when each book cover, advertisement, poster etc. had a character of its own. Each magazine headline, each title was different as the creator did each piece by hand and added to the pool of diversity. At present it is hard to differentiate between a  book on economics and a poetry book.
The desire and need to design a Gurmukhi typeface came from the lack of good Gurmukhi typefaces available today. My aim was to fill in the gap by adding to the Gurmukhi type palette available. In the project I explore the roots, the golden era and transition of the Gurmukhi script and design a semi–casual typeface that fits the contemporary taste. This project has two essential domains i.e the ‘essence’ of the typeface and the quality and ‘fineness’ of the type design, which I juggled constantly, switching between the two as the project progressed.

This is a semi–casual, contemporary Gurmukhi typeface with handwritten
rhythm that would serve the display and branding needs.
While drawing the first curves of a typeface one needs to tread very carefully because small changes at the micro level change the grey value and texture at macro levels. If the initial drawings have a major flaw that reflects later on to all the other letters.Working on core letters is really helpful to define the overall form of the script hence it helps to design the font efficiently.