“It is through the art of typography that we learn to read and write. Typography is even important for communications, he says. And these fonts can be sold as a package, and one can even make a living as a typographer, he adds. In the next step, they learn to scan and trace the outlines digitally and make all of them on the computer, to compile them all together. A student of Graphic Communications in Sirjana College of Fine Arts drafting typeface of a font. Lalit Kala Campus, the oldest fine art institution of Nepal, is the third institution that has typography as a course option.īijaya Maharjan, the head of Graphic Communications Department at Sirjana College of Fine Arts, says his students start from basic lines to shapes, from angles to composition, and learn to use them together in developing a font.
Five years later, Sirjana College of Fine Arts also integrated the subject in its course. It was in 2004 that Kathmandu University first introduced typography as a subject in the degree programme. Nepal is quite young in terms of its academic typography tradition. Fonts for everyone Ashlesha Maharjan, student of Graphic Communications in Sirjana College of Fine Arts, designing her font.
Veteran artist Singh has also designed ‘Bhanu’ font as a homage to Adikavi of Nepal, Bhanu Bhakta Archarya and his Nepali handwritten translation of Ramayan. Ramesh Poudel, artist and journalist at Radio Nepal, transformed his handwriting as a font and registered it as ‘Yagya’ font after his father, some two years ago. And if we observe, we can see that the trend is to artists name the font they have designed after themselves or their loved ones. Singh is teaching typography to the students of graphic communication at Kathmandu University, suggesting hopes for more months in the future.Īlong with him, many artists, art students, publication houses, and companies have developed their fonts in Nepal. His recent productions include one for the Curriculum Development Centre which has started using his font for its publications. He has designed a few Roman fonts and six more varieties of the Kamana font. I registered the font in 1995 under the Copyright Act at the Registrar’s Office.” Later, I designed and developed the Kamana font for the Kamana magazine that I was a founder of,” Singh recalls, “There were no computers then everything was handwritten and designed manually. Senior artist Ashok Man Singh, who was one of the first font designers of Nepal, says, “Then, there was only Ganesh font that was developed here. While books were being published in Nepali even before that, the fonts used in the books were mostly imported from India. Meanwhile, designing fonts in Nepal started around the 1980s. Photos of Bhrami script taken from Sirjana College of Fine Arts’ house journal ‘Sirjana’, Vol 3. But, it was James Prinsep, an English scholar, archaeologist and philologist for British East India Company, who developed a simplified, readable and writable Devanagari script in 1837. It flourished here as it shared similarities with the Sanskrit language during the Lichhavi and Malla period. Fonts ‘of Nepal’ĭevanagari script was derived and developed from the Bhrama Lipi (script) in India 2,000 years ago, including Tamil, Marathi, Telegu. Not many people like typing in Nepali, but the number gets even lower when we think about the actual number of fonts we use while typing Nepali.īut, why is the number so low? Does the country lack resources such as skilled human resources? Yes, say veterans of the field. There are more than 55,000 fonts of Latin/Roman alphabets (in which English is written), but there are only a few hundred of Devanagari, or Nepali, fonts.