Project 3 Document

I had been wanting to experiment with the devanagari script in the domain of type design. After my first two classroom projects which were done in the field of research and interactive design respectively, I felt a need to polish my form skills and study the building blocks of Typography.

Looking at publication design in India which uses Indic scripts. There is a massive shortage of hardworking typefaces. Most of the indic type-faces are created by people with non type design backgrounds.

My project started off with letter drawing and gradually took a turn towards display type design for heading and titling.

Project 3 Documentation Sanchit Sawaria Immanuel SureshSatya Rajpurohit

Methodology

Introduction

Final Character set

Introduction

I had been wanting to experiment with the devanagari script in the domain of type design. After my first two classroom projects which were done in the field of research and interactive design respectively, I felt a need to polish my form skills and study the building blocks of Typography.

Looking at publication design in India which uses Indic scripts. There is a massive shortage of hardworking typefaces. Most of the indic type-faces are created by people with non type design backgrounds.

My project started off with letter drawing and gradually took a turn towards display type design for heading and titling.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all I would like to thank my guide and mentor Mr Immanuel Suresh for guiding me throughout the 4 years of my design education. Between stories and chit-chat I got the edge in all my projects because of him.

For this particular project I would like thank Mr Satya Rajpurohit(www.indiantypefoundry.com) for guiding me and providing me with the most valueable and appropriate feedback during the entire design process.

Intro

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PROjECT DETAILS

There are very few typefaces for the devanagari script and almost none of them are display faces. Many promising devanagari type-faces are coming up for flowing text.

I would like to explore a condensed variant of devanagari for display and heading usage which would help in building heirar-chy in textflow and add to the shallow pool of display devanagari typefaces.

KEyWORDS

Type Design, Devanagari

METhODOLOGy

Character exploration Basic character set Form Correction Documentation

Project Title Condensed DevanagariDuration 8 weeksName Sanchit Sawariajoining year 2008Guide Immanuel Suresh; SN RajpurohitEmail [email protected] +91 9311084255Skype sancitsawarria

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Methodology

The project was rather challanging since it was my first experience with type design. Having no knowledge of devanagari type anatomy, it took me a while to get comfortable with the script.

The intial phases of research and drawing practice were in linear structure. Once I started with digital sketches, the testing and correc-tion phases were part of a cyclic process.

DESIGN PROCESS

Devnagari Type Anatomy

Type Design Basics

Letter drawing

Revised Brief

Setting Proportions

Skeleton Sketches

Character set on FontLab Studio 5

Testing & Corrections

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Anusvar Ikar Chandra Bindu

ConjunctHrsva Ukar

Single MatraHrsva Velanti KanaMatra Line

Head Line

Upper Mean Line

Lower Mean LineBaseline

Rukar Line

DEvANAGARI TyPE ANATOMy

TyPE DESIGN BASICS

I went through some type design basics from www.typeworkshop.com before the drawing phase. Though all the notes and material available has documented the type design process taking the latin script as a generic representative, it still explains the principals of spacing, readablitiy, proportions, form balancing, kerning, etc. which are essential to the letter design of any script.

Before starting to draw I studied the type anatomy done for devanagari by_________. This helped me understand the original structure of the script better. Although there are no such rules for devangari type design yet the rules for latin type design do not automatically apply.

Major differences being the absence of half forms and lower case. With matras, numerous conjuncts, alternates amounting to ap-proximately 750 characters, devanagari has a heavier and much more complicated character set compared to latin.

While drawing the basic letters I discovered there are no stan-dard proportions of the devanagari script yet as it hasnt been explored as much as latin from a type design point of view. The letter proportions of one calligrapher differs from all the others. Since the script is used for a number of languages, there is diver-sity in the rules and proportions of the basic set for devanagari.

Kohinoor Devanagri Bold used for type anatomy

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Kana

After studying the proportions and the type structure, I moved on to practice some letter drawing for basic understanding. Though my idea of the typeface has very little connection with the classi-cal structure and proportions, I found it useful to go through the freehand letter drawing phase. It gave me a certain control over the script.

The proposed typeface having a modular design made it more difficult for me to derive forms from the script. It was almost like working with a formulae which when applied to each glyph turns it into one that belongs to the modular typeface. however, the formula was visual rather than mathematical.

Letter drawing with a chisel tip marker on cartridge paper.

LETTER DRAWING

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The drawing phase gave me a lot of clarity of the devanagari letterforms. These samples came out of freehand exploration done with a chisel nib marker. My intention was to exaggerate certain glyphs to come up with a display look for the script.

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LETTER DRAWING

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This is one of my experiments with the Devanagari script. Came out of the first week of the project. The composition represents balance, a vital element and basic postulate for good design. This visual balance is imperative to the field of typography. The letters and the platform illustrate a balancing toy which keeps the centre of mass below the pivot point.

The composition represents the hindi word santulan or balance.

LETTER DRAWING

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SKELETON SKETChES

FIRST SKETCh

This particular sketch formed the basic design outline of the typeface. I went in for a high stroke contrast at first but at that stage I was focussing more on the structure and design. I decided to deal with the stroke and weight later. I pretty much got an idea of how the curves would behave in a condensed variant.

SKELETON SKETChES

Taking information from the first sketch, I drew the letters on a grid. Keeping as many alternates as I could incorporate I started defining the language of the stroke for the typeface. Skeleton sketches are extremely helpful when defining the design outline of the letters. But when in comes to balancing form and weight one has to work with thich strokes.

The reason most type designers start with the bold weight first is that it is the most challanging weight to manage positive and negative spaces; naturally because of the small counters.

caption lajksdhf ;asldkfh a;lskdjf a;s;lkasdjf akjhsdf

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SETTING PROPORTIONS

The letter a in devanagari drawn for comparing possible proportions.

CONDENSED, uLTRA OR COMPRESSED?

The first few digitized sketches were taking shape and it was time to set the proportions right. Since this was a tall typeface, it was important to test various possobilities regarding the character height and width.

Taking 1cm as 1 unit, I drew the letter a. Keeping the height constant, I made options for the character width. Since most of the devanagari characters are wide, it was tough to take a call on fixing the width. The letters looked condensed only in extreme proportions. But in comparision to other devanagari typefaces the condensed variant was working. I took the 7/16 proportion and added weight to it.

The words looked gigantic and the counters were already creat-ing problems. So I finally settled for 7.5/16.

Naturally the letters look wider with the extra weight. I had to finally draw the letters in bold. This excercise helped me define the positive and the negetive relationship.

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STROKE WIDTh

Starting with the bold weight I had to know how much would be bold and how much would go overboard and fall into the cat-egory of extra bold and black. I compared Sapient Sans Black, Din Engschrift and some of the letters I drew. The bold condensed weight of any typeface is wider than condensed and the stroke width is lesser than bold.

Myriad Pro

Final values

vertical stroke = 97 units Curved stroke = 92 units horizontal Stroke = 88 units

initial values

vertical stroke = 95 units Curved stroke = 95 units horizontal Stroke = 90 units

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TESTING & CORRECTIONS

With the proportions and skeleton sketches in place i started with the digital drawings. Started making groups of letters that look similar and use the same glyphs.

My first character set was nowhere close to looking like a condensed typeface. Even after setting proportions and calculating weight, the letters were becoming wide. The negative spaces were too imbalanced and there were conflicts in the design language of the typeface.

One of the first few digital trials. Comparing weight and character.

Basic unicode devanagari set in FontLab Studio 5

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Analysis and weight width grouping of Set 1.

Set 2 (above) and corrections (below).

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After completing the first set, I had frequent meetings with Satya Rajpurohit and discovered that the process of a type design proj-ect at NID was much different from that in the industry.

I had taken some detours and wrong turns and was willing to take some more for the benefit of the project. From there on I took feedback from Satya regularly who guided me till the end of the project.

Our meetings happened at the famous kaka chai under the influ-ence of a lot chai, smoke and bird droppings .

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TESTING & CORRECTIONS

The first set of corrections cleared out a lot things including the character widths. There were still some conflicts in the design language which I decided to solve in FontLab.

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I drew some basic matras and remaining characters so that the typeface could be tested. The best test for a typeface is to build words and sentences to see how the forms are relating to each other. In isolation the letters may seem perfect, but its only when you put them together to make words, they can be tested for readability and legibility.

2/3/2012 sanchitsawaria1

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At this stage, the typeface was coming into shape. All the basic characters were done. The matras were taking a lot of time to resolve.

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The ukar matra was the most challanging to resolve. The initial drawings looked very heavy and did not match the character of the other matras. Cutting the loop in half took the extra weight off and the diagonal direction of the stroke maintained the lan-guage of the typeface.

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The testing phase was perhaps he most rigorous and challanging among all the hurdles Ive faced during the course of this project. As soon as 4-5 characters are drawn, the testing begins as it is a natural feedback for the letterforms if they are working in groups or words. Characters, matras, half forms and conjuncts need to be kerned and balanced in the metrics window before they are tested in print.

Final Character Set

After 2 months of my realtionship with type, I had to take it to the next level. So I decided to finish with my basic character set.

Since this was a classroom excercise, it wasnt fit for production and extension. My faith in the idea is still strong that is why I chose to develop an entire family of fonts for the Diploma Project.

Poster featuring Kathan Bold Condensed at possible display sizes.

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The basic set! The devanagari numbers are no more in use though.

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FINAL ChARACTER SETFI

nal C

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Documents

Project 3 Document