Uday Raj Sinha Rachnavali — custom Devanagari lettering to celebrate an eminent literary figure of the 20th century

In 2021, the team at renowned Hindi literary magazine Nayi Dhara published two volumes of collected writing by their founding editor, and celebrated writer and publisher Uday Raj Sinha, to mark his birth centenary. I designed custom lettering for the covers of these volumes, inspired by decorative metal typefaces of the Jawaji Dadaji Type Foundry: specifically 36 point ornamented ‘Dattaram’ and 48 point ornamented ‘Madhukar’, as shown in their 1967 catalogue.

The visual references were selected for their classical appearance and ornamental features, and the goal was to create lettering that harked back to the past, but did not belong to it. To achieve this objective, the depth and three-dimensionality of the original were retained, while the proportions of the letterforms were updated to suit contemporary taste.