The work that goes behind the creation of a single font in our word processors is largely invisible to us as we scroll down the list and randomly select one out of it. When the Rachana Institute of Typography set out to create ornamental Unicode fonts in Malayalam, it took the team more than six months to create even one, for the creation of a single font includes the design of over 700 letters, including ‘Koottaksharam’ (joint letters).
The first of these fonts, titled ‘Sundar’ and open for free download to the public, will be released on Monday. It is part of a larger effort to develop a large set of ornamental fonts, drawing inspiration from good old calligraphy, in Unicode. There has been a dearth of variety in fonts, even as there is clear shift to the old style script in Malayalam publishing, both online and offline.
Artist Narayana Bhattathiri, known for his path-breaking work in Malayalam calligraphy, provided the creative guidance for the development of the fonts. The name of font ‘Sundar’ itself is a tribute to the man who helped bring over 35,000 of Bhattathiri’s calligraphy work to the international limelight.
According to K.H. Hussain of the Rachana Institute of Typography, the seeds of the current churn in Malayalam typography were sowed back in 1999, at a meeting of the Rachana Akshara Vedi in the capital city, which raised the demand of “our own script for our language”. It brought forth the need to make use of the old Malayalam script for use in computers. There was opposition to the demand from several quarters.
But in 2004, the first set of Unicode fonts, including the popular ones like Anjali, were released, sending out the message that the old script can be used in computing. The campaign was taken up by free software collectives like Swathanthra Malayalam Computing, paving the way for the development of more such fonts in Malayalam, which are now used widely on websites, blogs, e-mails and general online writing.
“The lack of variety in Unicode fonts was not an issue online, but for printing, it certainly was a problem. The last two years have seen a huge shift, with newspapers like Kerala Kaumudi and magazines like Samakalika Malayalam and Chalachitra Sameeksha , all shifting to the old script in Unicode. We expect a huge shift to old scripts to happen this year, for which we need to develop quite a lot of ornamental fonts. Some of the headline designs used by the designers during the old ASCII era, have been adapted for this purpose,” says Mr. Hussain.
He says the lack of awareness and discussion on fonts, in literary festivals and even at the Malayalam University, is a disappointment, in this context. Around 10 new ornamental fonts are in the pipeline.
