Words have character. Irrespective of the language and script they are written in, they have character. I have always wanted to learn the art of calligraphy and a two week self initiated project at college allowed me get acquainted with it. Expressive calligraphy in contrast to the traditional forms is more dynamic and abstract by nature. Its is consumed more as an image rather than text which may or
may not be legible.
Language and written scripts have always been an engaging subject for me. In terms of Devanagari typography and calligraphy, not much exploration and experimentation has been done yet. Hence, for my project I had created compositions consisting of words from Hindi language which have their roots in foreign languages like French, Portugese, Chinese, Arabic, Urdu etc. These words mainly come from the languages of nations who had their colonies in parts of the country during different times in history or had trade relations with India. A good bunch of words that we use in our daily vocabulary have foreign roots which we are not even aware of. The end product of the project is a series of posters displaying a composition made of the word as we read and write in Hindi with it's root word which comes from it's original script.
Surkh from a Persian word 'Sorkh'
Musafir from a Turkish word 'Misafir'
Girja from a Portugese word 'Igreja'
Chai from a Chinese word 'Chà'
Kaju from a Portugese word 'Caju'
Angreji from a French word 'Anglais'
Dukaan from a Turkish word 'Dukkan'
Kartoos from a French word 'Cartouche'
Behind the Scenes - Trial and Error
The tools
Thank You.
