Output details

Adobe Devanagari typeface. Adobe Inc, USA.

This research was undertaken to enable the design a new typeface for Hindi and other languages using the Devanagari script, for use in print and on screen. The creation of a contemporary Devanagari font that is suitable for business and for literary works in all media had not been done before. Study of materials in the archives of the Non-Latin Type Collection at the University of Reading and of recent publications provided evidence to determine the character set (about 800 glyphs per font) and to establish contemporary typographic requirements, such as the use of Hindi or Latin numerals in spreadsheets, the requirements of loan-word transliteration, and the presentation of Sanskrit material within contemporary publications. Manuscripts held at the British Library and SOAS, based on traditional Indian penmanship, informed experimental lettering trials. Taken together these investigations allowed a reassessment of the typographic conventions and letterform proportions required in a modern font, allowing an innovative but responsive new design. Further study of manuscripts and discussions with editors, curators and scholars informed decisions on the precise placement of vowel signs and modifiers that is enabled by the OpenType font format. OpenType font technology enables the font to support contextually determined forms and stylistic sets that cater for different linguistic, regional or stylistic requirements. The typeface is distributed globally in all copies of Adobe Creative Suite software.