Talk with Sarang Kulkarni

5th October 2012

I met Sarang today to show my research and the type explorations that I have done so far. As we were discussing  Sarag told me that I had skipped one chief step required for type design. The approach that I have taken to directly start with the mass and weight of the typeface referring a hand painted type is at a very hollow stage. What I now need to do is practice calligraphy on a regular basis, just like sketching to improve my understaning of the character. He told me that when you are designing a type from handpainters, then you have to input your knowledge, even on exploration stage, because handpainters do not have the knowledge of conventional type design and if his is not done, then I might face major problems in the character itself. By practicing calligraphy, I will understand the most important aspect ie; how a type is written, because that will help me understand the weight, the width the angle of the character.

As I have taken te approach of making my own type, then I will also have to read up on gujarati character study and how a letterform is constructed. Sarang gave me an excerise to draw some skeletal sketches of types and then add mass to them inorder to understand the positive and negative spaces. He told me to look at the typeface "Shruti" for windows and to analyse it and understand its mannerisms. Only after I understand how a character is drawn, only then can I start making my character.

Talk with Sanchit Sawaria

Sanchit Sawariya has created a typeface named "Kathan" as a part of his studio 3 and his Diploma project with ITF. I discussed with him my process so far and whether I was going the right direction. He advised me to sketch out the skeletons first and then add mass to a typeface. The mass can be added later, once the skeleton of the typeface is fixed. This will help me in understanding the key structure of the typeface. I guess designing a type face, is very similar to drawing human study. You first have to get the skeleton right.

Sanchit later guided me in font lab and explained me the basic tools. This was really helpful as I had no idea how to even create a file in font lab with the right encoding before.

I tried out some linear sketches for my type. Will try out some more soon. Also I am planning to experiment with a very crude basic latin typeface on fontlab before jumping to Gujarati, just to get a hang of the software.

You can see Sanchit's work here : http://sanchitsawaria.blogspot.in/

Information Collection - 3 | Talk with Amélie Bonet

Phase One


Amélie Bonnet is a Type designer at Dalton Maag, London.
She had come down to NID for conducting a workshop for the PG 4th semester graphic design students. I had a very brief session about my project with her. She guided me through the type design prices she uses to make her fonts. She explained me what the Unicode system is and how I should develop my type according to it. I further asked how I can enhance this project, where she told me that I should take two hand painted type from two different designers and the see a possibility to fuse both types into one and make a completely new type.

Information Collection - 3 | Talk with Sarang Kulkarni

Phase One

I met Sarang Kulkarni on 16th February 2012. Sarang explained to me various processes involved in typed design. Firstly, he showed me a study of Painter Kafeel's type that he and Hanif Kureshi had worked out. The processes involved in making it, the visual corrections, the color variations worked out on the type, etc. were put in a form of a presentation. He then explained me the reason behind this venture. He told me that they want to promote graphic designer to use the hand painted fonts, so that the real hand painters would be benefit for it and their art would not die away. This would be done by making available the font at minimal rate, so more people can buy the font.He said that their aim was to make a good display type for the audience to use it consciously and thus making a new type awareness in India.
He discussed how a glyph set is made and advised me to work out the glyphs and the number of glyphs in my project. He also told me to make a usable font so that it can be used at a very basic level. He showed me the way how the forms of a type could be changed after getting from a hand painter. Its not that these forms are just vectorized and used, but there is a constant graphic design intervention in each form of the font.
Lastly, he told me to finalized the glyphs and get the hand painted banner form the hand painter to Mumbai the next time I come.