The story
Multiple scripts for multilingual India
The award-winning Anek variable font
The nine scripts have base characters in the center, with vowel signs and conjuncts that come above, below or next to them.
The Anek multi-script typeface for 9 Indian languages and Latin was made through a collaboration of 12 type designers working across 8 cities in India.
How did Ek Type win two type design awards (the TDC Certificate of Typographic Excellence and the D&AD Graphite Pencil) for their Anek multi-script typeface?
There were two key factors to their success:
- Teamwork: The team of 12 collaborated democratically.
- Equality: Giving equal value to each of the nine Indian writing systems (scripts) and Latin, while maintaining both common visual features and script-specific characteristics.
Teamwork during lockdown
Getting 12 people to collaborate while speaking in three languages (English, Hindi, and Marathi) and spread out in eight different Indian cities (Mumbai, Pune, Kalyan, Hinganghat, Baroda, Bengaluru, Bharampur, and Pali) is not an easy task.
Ek Type established a collaboration structure that fostered teamwork, while also giving designers the liberty to be creative.
The team consisted of Maithili Shingre, Yesha Goshar, Kailash Malviya, Aadarsh Rajan, Sulekha Rajkumar, Vaishnavi Murthy, Omkar Bhoir, Mrunmayee Ghaisas, Mahesh Sahu, Sarang Kulkarni, Noopur Datye, and Girish Dalvi.
Ten people focused on one script each, while the other two members worked on font engineering and project management. The designers focused on the script that was most familiar to them.
Via three- to four-hour weekly video calls, team members annotated drawings with emojis, arrows, text, and other marks in their video conference platform. In between calls, the team collaborated online. The team made design decisions based on majority or unanimous votes.
Before the pandemic, most of the team had worked together at the Ek Type studio in Mumbai. Remote work created some unforeseen benefits. “Everyone had the time to venture in different directions, not getting colored by what the others were doing,” said Noopur Datye, co-founder and type designer at Ek Type.
To learn more, read Multilingual scripts for multilingual India.