How calligraphy inspired a new typeface for an ancient Nepalese script
The Newar are the people of the Kathmandu Valley. Numbering approximately 1.5 million, they gave their name to Nepal, and have their own unique family of scripts. One of these, Rañjanā Lipi, has been used to write ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts and inscriptions since the late years of the first millennium. Despite its cultural importance, its usage was restricted, and it was preserved through underground calligraphic practice. Though it is used on signage and media in the Kathmandu area, it did not have a font that could correctly render it on the digital platform – until Mumbai studio Ek Type was commissioned by philanthropist Murali K. Prahalad to create it.
The designers at Ek Type, Tathagata Biswas and Noopur Datye, had experience creating fonts for related writing systems, but they had never worked with Rañjanā before. Collaborating closely with Newar designer Ananda Maharjan– organiser of a calligraphic community Callijatra, they got to grips with the nuances of the script. They also studied Rañjanā calligraphy found in manuscripts. These historical and contemporary calligraphy practices influence the design of Nithya Ranjana – it contains traces of the stylus used to write it by hand, even in its digital form. Significantly, the font is open source – this means that Newar type designers (and anyone else who wants to use it) are free to remake and reshape these basic, universal archetypes.
“These historical and contemporary calligraphy practices influence the design of Nithya Ranjana – it contains traces of the stylus used to write it by hand, even in its digital form.”
The resulting font itself, Nithya Ranjana, is both beautiful and practical, aiming to be used everywhere a script would be – on websites, magazines, signages, with a Unicode application in the works. It has been embraced by its community, and can be used to write Sanskrit, Pali and Nepal Bhasa. For its creativity, diligence and aesthetic quality, it was awarded a Yellow Pencil in the Type Design & Lettering (Single Typeface) category.
Rañjanā is not a simple script. It is made of several hundred conjuncts and glyphs, rather than a few dozen letters, which stack vertically, horizontally and diagonally. The design involved creating a dizzying number of forms. To give a sense of the task, the team list character-specific mātrās (syllables), more than 750 stacked conjuncts, stylistic alternates, as well as vowels, consonants, numerals, and punctuation marks, and 600+ additional forms as their final delivery. In an industry that often takes simplicity and “less is more” as articles of faith, it was impossible to consider the project without leaning into the complexity inherent in the script itself: “I think that complexity is relative,” says Datye. “In the case of Rañjanā, its very essence lies in its complexity. The variety of contextual letter shapes in Rañjanā are not problems, but rather they're the features of its design... It's not about retaining the complexity [for its own sake]. But if there is complexity that exists already, it's about how you work with it, rather than simplifying it.”