While English typography is a vast playground of choices, the Tamil typography artistes from across the world, say that the design options have long been limited, though many of them are now working to change that.

In fact, the conversation around Tamil typography has also been finding space online with workshops and discussions pulling the type designers into the field.

For Chennai and US-based artist, designer, and researcher Hemalatha (Hemu) Venkataraman, Tamil typography is as much about memory as it is about design.

Running The Tamizh Type Project, she has has been exploring the visual language of the Tamil script. While she indeed welcomes the discourse around Tamil lettering and fonts, she also observes something is changing in the process.

“A lot of fonts now lean towards more modern styles in the name of minimalism. I genuinely think that the knowledge and skills of our lettering artists and typographers’ hand-drawn signs, designs, letter-press work, is invaluable and must be studied and documented. With increased digital signage, we are losing on the charm, character, and aesthetics of these artisans’ work,” said Ms Venkataraman, adding that the font and lettering should not be made palatable for western consumption.

“Think about the movie posters and book covers from back in the day vs. now. There was more variety and play then than what we have now constrained ourselves to with digital signage, print, etc,” she added.

On that note, the fascination with lettering found in everyday life is something Devyani Mahadevan who runs Tamil Type Thedal, related to closely. “Among the zillion other things that might demand people’s attention on a busy, hot day in the streets of Chennai, I think a static hand-painted lettering on a wall might not top the list but the makers make that happen, and I was fascinated by all the ways they do that with type,” Ms. Mahadevan added.

She has also observed how they push the script to be big, bold, grand, and punchy, adding neon fluorescent colours. “All of this truly taught me in ways that helped me observe better, and grow as a designer,” she said.

In recent times, typography artiste Tharique Azeez based out of Srilanka, whose typeface have been used by iOS and Google fonts, say workshops on Tamil typography has been increasing by the day.

Mr. Azeez says his workshops on drawing letters, expressive lettering workshop, introduction to font tools have been attended by people from all over the world including the young type designers of Chennai.

“The essence of using a correct font or typeface is about giving the emotion to the reader,” Mr. Azeez added. He believes there is still a lack of accessible guides and resources for Tamil typography, which he has been working on.

“More importantly, brands and designers should move towards using more custom Tamil typefaces instead of relying on the same few default Tamil fonts,” he said. “If someone wants to enter this space, the first thing they should do is simply start drawing letters,” Mr. Azeez said. “That is where the understanding begins.”

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