Post #1572378

2026-04-14 07:20 UTC

@hexaitos As far as individual designers go, there's two in particular that I personally look up to. Pooja Saxena was the first Devanagari type designer I came across and seeing her work was the first time I discovered that Devanagari could look cool as fuck. She is literally the whole reason I took interest in the script to begin with. In addition to working at TypeTogether and having led the adaptations of Adelle Sans (https://www.type-together.com/adelle-sans-devanagari-font) and very recently Bree (https://www.type-together.com/bree-devanagari-font), she also does custom work on her own as Matra Type (https://www.matratype.com/, some wonderful lettering work). AND she maintains an archive called India Street Lettering (https://indiastreetlettering.com/, which appears to be down atm?), which aims to document, well, street lettering in India, which is *incredibly* diverse. The importance of her work documenting this stuff cannot be underestimated, because while more common scripts like Latin and Cyrillic are well-documented in terms of established conventions and stylistic possibilities, the same cannot be said for Indian scripts. Also a book came out of it! (https://www.blaft.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/india-street-lettering) Anyway, I already would have greatly respected her if she just made typefaces, but the fact she goes a step further and actively documents extremely important things that had historically received almost no attention and gives people like me the means to shift a little further away from the Eurocentrism that permeates design teaching and documentation... I would go as far as to say that she's one of the most important type designers working today. Also, she's on Mastodon! (@matratype) Please please please go follow her if this stuff sounds interesting to you.

Replies (3)

@melvian@dragonchat.org 2026-04-14 07:20

@hexaitos The other designer is Kimya Gandhi, who, with Rob Keller (who mostly does Latin to my understanding), runs the foundry Mota Italic (https://motaitalic.com/). Some very inventive typefaces, like her adaptation of DJR's absolutely bonkers Fit typeface (https://motaitalic.com/product/fit-devanagari/). She also teaches the Practica Devanagari courses, one of which I was able to take and enjoyed it a lot (which I could talk a lot about). Not all of her work is sold directly through Mota Italic, there's been a couple of her stuff done through other foundries. For instance, Diatype Devanagari (https://abcdinamo.com/typefaces/diatype-devanagari) and the earlier Favorit Devanagari (https://abcdinamo.com/typefaces/favorit-devanagari) were done through ABC Dinamo. I find Favorit Devanagari an interesting case study as an adaptation of an existing Latin typeface because if one understands the conventions of the script well enough, it's apparent how Kimya chose to selective introduce *slightly* odd shapes for matras and some shapes that's much like the slightly odd construction of the original Latin. Because of this I found it peculiar that she used Favorit as one of the main typefaces for talking about the different letterforms of Devanagari during the course. In all fairness Diatype Devanagari probably wasn't ready yet when the slides were prepared, and when actually talking about the script conventions and construction logic she went to more conventional typefaces and other proper resources for that. Another one is the adaptation of Zarid Sans through 29LT, which I really like (https://www.29lt.com/product/29lt-zarid-sans-dl/). There's a few other places I like and occasionally think about but those are the main designers and foundries that stick out to me.

Open ##1572379
@matratype@typo.social 2026-04-15 15:48

@melvian Thank you! 🫠 🥹

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@matratype@typo.social 2026-04-15 15:49

@melvian Yep, India Street Lettering is down this week for server migration — back up in a few days 🤞🏽 @hexaitos

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