Joana Ranito Fonts for North Indic scripts require large character sets to support all necessary character combinations; even more so in a global market, where transliterations need to be intentionally supported. The traditional approach—one tailor-made glyph per consonant or vowel ligature—is time-consuming and expensive to develop, and results in large file sizes: two major impediments to the development and implementation of fonts for North Indic scripts, especially in multiscript environments. The most widespread solutions to the issue are often insufficient, or used inadequately.
At Universal Thirst, we’ve been experimenting with a new development approach that pushes the boundaries of the current OpenType specification for North Indic scripts, using the existing technology to its full potential. We break down the letterforms to their core re-usable elements, and we put them back together using contextual substitutions and positioning. We call this the “on-the-fly” system, which we have implemented in the redesign of Noto Sans Bengali.
By making use of this system, as well as a holistic and systematic approach to the design, we have been able to significantly reduce character sets and file size, without sacrificing craftsmanship, refinement, and letterform balance.
With the Noto Sans Bengali redesign as the main case-study, as well as Devanagari projects from our library, we will showcase the extent to which we have been able to implement this system; share the challenges we faced, and how we overcame them; talk about possibilities for the future; and discuss the pros, cons, and limitations of breaking the current mould of Indic typeface development.
We hope to show how reframing the way we think about a writing system can unlock new solutions and possibilities.