Just before the massive tsunami struck, I was on vacation in Sri Lanka. During one of my walks through Tangalle, a small town on the southern coast, I came across a tiny shop with school supplies, including several textbooks for learning Sinhalese. The characters in those textbooks looked exquisite, yet they remained a complete enigma to me.
Even today, there are tribes in the Amazon rainforest who perceive us as unfamiliar entities. It’s been suggested that Native Americans wouldn’t last a minute on the Autobahn near Munich. Conversely, a city dweller from the Western world would also struggle to endure in the rainforest.
I’ve attempted to envision how an Amazon Indian might react to something like the latest Shell annual report or the London A to Z map. It’s likely they would find these completely bewildering. In that small Sri Lankan shop, I felt a bit like that Amazon Indian, though not entirely. I recognized it was a specific language and a schoolbook, written in Sinhalese and translatable. My query at that moment was: what would a graphic representation that remains unintelligible to a Westerner look like? In essence, a script that cannot be translated. It gives the appearance of a script, yet there’s nothing beyond that impression. The meaning, significance, and purpose remain elusive.
With this thought-provoking question in mind, I embarked on designing a script that embodies and retains its sense of mystery. I meticulously crafted the characters, ensuring they genuinely resemble letters. However, they serve no purpose beyond that. I made earnest efforts to adhere to the aesthetic principles we follow in type design. The design is rooted in calligraphy, and proportional spacing is maintained in what are called word forms. Above all, it’s an exercise in aesthetics. Ultimately, the sole criterion this script/font I’m creating must fulfil is beauty.
