Provoking Type — a commanding Devanagari artwork to convey lessons from a course about decolonising typography

In the spring on 2024, I attended Type Electives’ Provoking Type programme, facilitated by Schessa Garbutt. For the final project of this five-week course, each participant designed an artwork that visualised an idea that made a strong impression on them during this time. My contribution addressed the notion of coming from a culture and region whose design traditions are not well-documented. Following Schessa’s lead, I learned to transform this disheartenment into something productive and optimistic: if the archive doesn’t exist yet, then I can participate in its making.

The artwork features the word परम्परा, Hindi for tradition. Made with scotch tape on OHP sheet, it was meant to be only the first step in making a cyanotype, but ended up in the final design with a different artistic treatment. The shapes of the letterforms are dynamic and purposeful, but the making is messy, not unlike one’s attempts to reconstruct marginalised design histories. My focus was on making with what is available rather than the ideal raw materials, and with experimenting with cyanotype, accepting that conditions impact the outcome as much our efforts.