Research Projects

India Street Lettering

India Street Lettering is an archive of the shared typographic culture that thrives in the country’s urban spaces. Built over a decade, this ongoing effort is focused on meticulously documenting, annotating and geo-tagging public lettering made by analog means from around India. I use this archive for educational workshops, lectures, type walks. It helps broaden my understanding of Indian typographic cultures and design in local scripts.

Since 2023, I’ve been self-publishing zines to celebrate thematic design paradigms I’ve has uncovered through organising and re-organising my documentation through different lenses. The same year, I was awarded the B•LORE Grant by the Bangalore International Centre to complete a short film about the street lettering around Bengaluru’s M. G. Road. Photographs from this collection have been exhibited at Bangalore International Centre (2023), Indian Institute for Human Settlements (2024), Mahindra Sanatkada Lucknow Festival (2025) and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (2025). Most recently, this archive became the basis of my first book, India Street Lettering: A Journey through Typographic Craft & Culture, published by Blaft Publications (2026).

The project has been featured in Creative Boom, Design Monthly, Kottke, It’s Nice That, Better Letters magazine and Casual Archivist, among others.

Selected Writing

Saxena Pooja, “Rereading, rewriting, rethinking: On alternative publishing perspectives,” in Alphabettes Soup: Feminist Approaches to Type, ed. Amy Papaelias (Bikini Books, 2026), 369.

Saxena, Pooja. India Street Lettering: A Journey Through Typographic Craft & Culture. Chennai: Blaft Publications, 2026.

Saxena, Pooja. “Character building: The enduring language of Indian streets” The Caravan, December 2025.

Saxena Pooja, “Indian Sign Painting: A Typeface Designer’s Take on the Craft,” Better Letters, July 17, 2025, https://bl.ag/indian-sign-painting-a-typeface-designers-take-on-the-craft/.

Saxena Pooja, “Lessons from Letters,” Purée Mag, January 12, 2025, https://pureemag.com/2025/01/12/lessons-from-letters/.

Saxena, Pooja, and Scaglione José, eds. Primarium: Handwriting Education across Cultures and Continents. TypeTogether, 2025.

Saxena, Pooja. Review of Sadak: Hand Painted Street Signs in India, by Aradhana Seth. BLAG: Better Letters Magazine, 2024.

Saxena Pooja, “Remnants of Single-Screen Cinema Signs in Delhi,” Paper Planes, March 2, 2022, https://www.joinpaperplanes.com/remnants-of-single-screen-cinema-signs-in-delhi/.

Saxena Pooja, “Devanagari Type Anatomy,” in Building Ligatures: The Power of Type, ed. Linda Kudrnovská (TypeTogether, 2022), 110.

Saxena Pooja, “A Beginner’s Guide to Multiscript Typography,” in Building Ligatures: The Power of Type, ed. Linda Kudrnovská (TypeTogether, 2022), 102.