On the 7th/8th November 3 members of Aksharaya gave a two day calligraphy workshop at our campus. Aksharaya is a non-for-profit organisation that aims to promote understanding of Indian lettering. As part of this mission, they are committed to keeping the art of traditional Indian calligraphy alive and oraganise a variety of events to pass on knowledge of this important skill.
On the first day Santosh Kshirsagar (a faculty at Sir J J Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai) introduced the art-form before encouraging participants to start making marks with the wide selection of tools in front of them. After lunch everyone started developing an alphabet of their own, trying to keep consistent style between each letter. Participants used all sorts of scripts including Devanagari, Kannada, Malayalam, English and Arabic.
The next day Santosh encouraged students to be more expressive with their strokes, exploring the wide variety of shapes that are achievable with one tool. To help with this Santosh (along with Sarang Kulkarni and Pallavi Apte) demonstrated some techniques whilst creating some amazing pieces which impressed the onlookers.
Sarang also runs WhiteCrow Design Management which specialises in typographic design. To finish the second day he gave a presentation on the work his firm undertakes, for example developing custom typefaces for Vodafone in a wide variety of Indian scripts. He also showed some impressive calligraphic work commissioned by advertising agencies that illustrated the ongoing relevance of calligraphy in modern design.
It was an intensive 2 days but some important lessons and skills were learnt. For example, how easy it is to make unique looking lettering (whether it be beautiful flowing script or bold ‘grunge’ typography). Creating letters by hand should also lead to a deeper understanding of type design and why letters are shaped the way they are.
