View from the Balcony-Story of a font with a difference

Shaily Patel is a fresh graduate from the Department of Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.University, Vadodara, Gujarat. With a keen interest in type design and typography, she has been developing typefaces since three years, in Indian scripts as well as English. She aims to pursue a career in type design and explore possibilities of font design in Indic scripts.

While attending Juan Villanueva’s “Display Type Class” at Cooper Union, Shaily designed a high contrast Latin font named Maya, with peculiar triangular serifs and lots of interesting improvisations in form.

Shaily launched her first type family - Balcony - A Type Family Inspired by safety grilles— on ‘MyFonts’ in February 2021. Her work has been recognised, alongside seven other women, as ‘Women of Typographic Excellence’ in The Malee Scholarship 2020 by Sharp Type, New York. She is a recipient of the “Certificate of Typographic Excellence” in 24th Annual TDC Typeface Design Competition by the Type Directors Club in Students’ category of Type Family.

The winning project, Balcony, has been featured in the Page Magazine, a German publication focusing on the creative industry.

More info

1. https://displaytypedesign.com/projects/Shaily_Patel.html
2. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/shaily-patel/balcony/
3. https://page-online.de/typografie/die-gewinner-des-tdc-2021-typo-lettering/