Angrezi Signboard Painters

Feb 2016

15 Mon

16 Tue

17 Wed

18 Thu

19 Fri 09:00 AM – 09:25 AM IST

20 Sat 09:00 AM – 09:25 AM IST

21 Sun

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Lenses or Frames are a crucial element in any design. Through the last few years of TGP we’ve been exploring methodologies & principles of design, thoughts on various domains of design & your journeys through novel concepts & explorations. This year we thought we should pick up one lens through which you can view your design - Designing through the lens of India.

Being a part of a global community means taking in a lot of concepts from the east and west giving rise to a state of constant flux - but what have these trends meant for our cities, people and places? Through this years design track we want to invite speakers to talk about their work through principles, ideologies or (even better) work samples of how they’ve understood an element of our country and designed for it.

We’re throwing out a few ideas to elaborate the type of topics we’d like to encourage this year - Designing for preserving our past / cultural heritage, designing for the evolving needs of rural India, designing urban farming techniques to grow crops more economically, Designing modern housing units (and also in the process defining what it means to be a Modern Indian!), designing a type-face resonating the spirit of urban youth, designing a system of ethics for using mobile apps, designing for local eco-systems, designing a rural education system that allows you to earn while you learn. We’re keen on understanding the challenges you pick up in your work / your practice and through it understand the elements of an Indian context you work with.

Hosted by

The Goa Project

#The Goa Project Funnel The Goa Project is an unconference - where unlike a typical conference, the talks are not put together by a panel or knowledge partner - but is proposed by the attendees themselves. You propose a session or talk that might be of interest to the audience at the unconference, … more

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Angrezi Signboard Painters

Submitted Jan 13, 2016

Technical level: Intermediate

a look into a very peculiar phenomenon that occurs when signboard painters paint signs in both devanagiri and latin scripts.

Outline

his project was about creating “Adhyapak” (The Teacher), a Latin typeface that uses the Devanagiri (Hindi) angle of calligraphy as its basic foundation. The typeface takes its inspiration from the streets of India in the form of elements such as flourishes, while laying emphasis on readability & legibility.
An interesting difference noted between Devanagiri (Hindi) & Latin (English) calligraphy
is that the angle at which one held the stylus was the opposite for both scripts.
Since the colonization of India, there has always been a requirement for signboard painters to create multi-lingual signs. Initially trained to write in Devanagiri, these signboard painters would need to shift the angle of their brush to write in English. More experienced painters subconsciously flipped their brush around while shifting between the two scripts. Amateur painters and people who execute quick jobs like vehicle number plates do not realize the importance of flipping the angle of their brush and produce peculiar results. They use the the Devanagiri angle to write both scripts. This is the subtle essence that the Indian street has left behind on hand painted Latin script.

Requirements

Projector

Speaker bio

After having graduated from the Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology in 2009, Nikhil has worked as a graphic designer at companies like INK talks and Bhavishyavani Future Soundz before starting his own design outfit - Junglegym Studio. His flyer and event artwork at Bhavishyavani has been featured in Kyoorious- one of India’s leading design magazines.

He is an aspiring typographer and an ardent typophile. Obsessed with detail and precision, Nikhil loves to spend his free time studying and designing fonts some of which have been featured on Behance. He currently has completed work on 3 of his very own fonts. Nikhil enjoys having a multi disciplinary approach to design, and hence has worked on projects ranging from mobile applications to identity design to print-making. His studio is based out of his stud farm on the outskirts of Pune with an advisory panel that consists of horses, cats, dogs, a pig and a lesser sulphur crested Australian cockatoo.