Devanagari Typecooker — a tool to generate ideas to draw Devanagari letters
Tool Making
Devanagari TypeCooker is a simple online contraption that produces “recipes”, or a list of formal parameters related to typographic shapes, which can be used as a starting point to draw letterforms. While they may appear random, the parameters have been carefully chosen after a survey of Devanagari typefaces and lettering samples, and offer opportunities to contemplate the script’s letterforms in imaginative ways. The recipes can be of increasing levels of complexity, offering apposite challenges to novice as well as experienced practitioners. You can read about the making of Devanagari TypeCooker and how its parameters were chosen here.
It can be used in classes or workshops, but works equally well for solitary practices of drawing letterforms. If you use Devanagari TypeCooker, I’d love to see your results and hear feedback.
Devanagari TypeCooker is built on the foundation of Erik van Blokland’s TypeCooker for the Latin script.
A Devanagari TypeCooker workshop for students of the typeface design programme at the University of Reading, facilitated by Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar, who also supplied this photograph.
Letterform explorations by Shaily Patel and Nikhil Biniwale, facilitated by Devanagari TypeCoooker
