Additional resources about South Asian scripts and typography
Please feel free to contribute! Send me an email!
*** As of Summer 2020, I’ve uploaded all of the book cover images to my Flickr account! Please view them there! ***
— Script and language —
Omniglot – Possibly the best online resource available, showing basic alphabets and functionality of different world writing systems. Information about Indic syllabic alphabets can be found here.
Ancient Scripts – Information on modern and historic scripts used in the region.
ScriptSource – A collaborative resource with plenty of technical information, ScriptSource seeks to “bridge the gap between the designer, developer, linguist and user.”
Wikipedia Languages of India page – In case you haven’t looked there yet. Tons of great introductory info on Wikipedia.
— Manuscript catalogs, historical resources —
Archive.org , Google Books , Hathi Trust – Many old books in the public domain have been scanned and made available through these sites. Can be very helpful for research.
Digital Library of India – I personally haven’t figured out to get the books to load, but it looks like this might be useful.
National Mission for Manuscripts – Indian Government initiative to locate, preserve, and catalog manuscripts. I wish they hosted images!
IGNCA – Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts’ catalog of manuscripts. (Might be the same as NMM)
— Schools and organizations —
TypoDay conference – International typography conference held annually, hosted by Indian design schools.
Aksharaya – Association of letter-conscious people; host workshops and events.
Granshan conference – International conference of non-Latin script enthusiasts.
CDAC – Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.
NID – National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
IDC at ITT Bombay – Offers a visual communications major with typography and lettering modules.
University of Reading – Post-graduate program with a focus on non-Latin typeface design, taught by Dr. Fiona Ross. Student work can be seen here.
SOAS – School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Excellent library and special collections.
— Type foundries and Fonts —
ITF – Indian Type Foundry, founded by Satya Rajpurohit, is a leading force in new Indic and Latin font development in India.
EkType – Ek Type is a collective of type designers focused on designing contemporary Indian typefaces.
Design Difference – Specializing in Malayalam typefaces.
Adobe Indics – Adobe is currently designing a new range of Indic typefaces, available via Typekit.
Monotype Indics – Monotype’s digital font catalog includes many of the South Asian scripts.
Fonts.com – Another venue for Monotype’s collection.
Google Fonts – Libre Indic fonts, currently in Devanagari and Telugu.
Modular Infotech – A very large catalog of fonts for use within their typesetting software, as well as some unicode-compliant OTF designs.
— Font Development Resources —
Microsoft’s Indic OpenType development – Guide for typeface designers and font developers. Explains Indic shaping engine, as well as how to create features.
Adhesiontext – Sample text generator with Indic script support
Google Fonts on GitHub – Repository of source files of the Google Fonts Indic projects, all Open-Source.
Design With FontForge: Devanagari – Links and advice for Devanagari font creation.
— Design and type link portals —
Design in India – Large portal of links
D’source – Extensive government-sponsored design resource run by IDC at IIT Bombay, NID at Bangalore, and DOD at IIT Guwahati.
Luc Devroye’s Indic type index – Luc, prolific cataloger of type designers and font resources, takes on the Indic world with this massive list.