Two interesting typographic snippets came across my desk this week, both from India:
1. HandpaintedType
The initiative of Delhi based designer Hanif Kureshi, HandpaintedType is a collaborative project aimed at capturing the rapidly-disappearing lettering styles of street painters across India.
The idea is to document the particular typographic style of individual sign painters. Each artist pruduces a character set on canvas, which is redrawn digitally and eventually released as a commercially available font. Apparently 50% of the proceeds from every font sale goes to the painter and the other half is invested in the continuation of the project.
Here’s an example of an original character set, hand painted in Old Delhi by an artist called Kafeel:
