BHARAT: An Indian font that integrates elements from 12 languages

India's top typographers at Rediffusion Design Studios have been working hard for the past six months to create a font that would be intrinsically and eternally Indian

How about a country having a national font? If countries have national anthems, dishes, animals, birds and even dances, why not a national font? India's top typographers at Rediffusion Design Studios and its sister agency - Everest, led by Virendra Tivrekar, have been working hard for the past six months to create a font that would be intrinsically and eternally Indian.
 
The font, BHARAT, was launched in Mumbai over the Independence Day weekend by Mahindra Group chairman, Anand Mahindra, in the presence of Dr Sandeep Goyal, MD, Rediffusion, and Kalyani Srivastava, its joint president.
 
Until now, only Sweden had a font of its own - Sweden Sans, created in 2014 by a Stockholm agency Söderhavet which designed a modern geometric typeface inspired by 1950s signs to be used by the government and by business corporations.

 

Sharing his excitement at the launch, Goyal said, "the agency wanted to design a befitting tribute to India on its 75th Independence Day that would have utility and memorability beyond just a date. It was not till 2010 that India got itself a symbol for the rupee currency. So having a font that is nationalistic and invokes pride by its usage is the driving force behind the creation of BHARAT".
 
BHARAT integrates elements from 12 scheduled Indian languages and showcases the diversity and traditions of the country. It has a strong phonetic underpin. Every letter of the alphabet is rooted in the letter's phonetic sound in the parent Indian script – be it Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Kannada and more. For example, the 'Q' is a combination of half "ka" and "va" of Hindi and is rendered accordingly.

 
Initially, the font will have to be downloaded from a digital link, but it can subsequently be used on both computers and mobiles without any difficulty. Speaking of his plans to take the font global, Goyal said that although there have been no discussions with the government, "we are exploring global tie-ups including talking to Google in the future. But, in the digital age, it is largely a 'share' phenomenon".