This presentation reports on three connected areas of African script engineering designed to solve workflow bottlenecks between font engineers, type foundries, and native script communities, drawing on our ongoing work with Font Bureau and the Yobo script community as primary case studies. First, KorataSet (“Truth Source”) establishes a centralized database of African orthographies, focusing on the expansive Niger-Congo language family and its Southern Bantoid sub-branches. An Exemplar font demonstrates consensus solutions from the database’s initial technical audit using OpenType features. Second, the Yobo font project, developed alongside the script creator, community stakeholders, and David Berlow (Font Bureau), demonstrates a three-layer rule system: Primary Ductus Grammar, Secondary Spatial Adaptation, and Etymological Overrides. This framework preserves native script semantics, topological identity, and structural integrity within a 2000 x 2000 UPM Ideographic Character Frame (ICF). Finally, our TypeMo tool bridges script encoding and community deployment by generating ductus-logic ‘glyphConstruction’ recipes, vector font data, and sidecar typemographic (type motion) data mapping. We will demonstrate cross-platform workflows that export data into UFO-based and UFO-compatible engineering tools (including RoboFont, Fontra, and Glyphs) alongside our motion-assisted interactive documentation, explainer videos, and animated typographic analyses. A core alignment established with David Berlow and Font Bureau focuses on a dual-audience impact: supporting type designers and font engineers while giving native script learners direct access to the font and its integrated teaching and learning materials (TLMs).
African Script Futures: Engineering Workflows from Truth Source to Yobo and TypeMo
Simon Charwey
Simon Charwey is an African script researcher, type designer, and co-founder at Ubani, where he develops motion-assisted type technology, interactive documentation, and video documentaries to resolve language digitization bottlenecks for the digital future of African writing systems. An MFA alumnus of the Yale School of Art, Charwey serves on the Advisory Board of the UNESCO Chair in Digital Futures at Stanford, directs the African Design Matters Initiative, and consults for global foundries.
A 2024–2025 Stanford SILICON Practitioners Fellow, his ongoing work bridges African language institutions with global industry counterparts. Collaborating with Font Bureau on the Yobo typeface and the KorataSet "Truth Source" database, his research integrates ductus grammar, OpenType features, and cross-platform workflows connecting tools like TypeMo with industry-standard UFO environments. As he quietly defines his practice, Charwey’s research data has supported Google’s training of African type designers, leading to his founding of the "African Type Designers" community—a growing platform activated by members confronting his foundational prompt: "Ungubani (Who are you), African type designer?"