Workshops & Lectures

Pooja was invited to speak about street lettering in India at Script Talk at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. Her lecture framed public signage as crucial material culture that is valuable to our shared understanding of cities and the people and institutions that inhabit them. In particular, she shared lettering from Chennai, and the different interpretations of Art Deco idioms in signage around India. The talk was complemented with an exhibition of the same name that showcased the physicality of letterforms rendered in different materials.

This talk at TypeLab Asia was a behind the scenes look at how I keep this project alive and kicking — everything from what goes into preparing for a documentation trip to why I photograph some signs and not others, and how the archive’s annotation system works to what research underscores its organisation. I gave a tour of the archive’s new website, designed by 3 Sided Coin, and introduced the upcoming India Street Lettering book, being published by Blaft Publications.

Acknowledging the challenges she has faced in annotating the multi-script letterforms in this archive according to their styles, Pooja has set out to learn and devise the language she needs to achieve that. In a short talk, she will talk about why this effort is important for the project and her journey thus far.

Register for the event here.

Pooja took the India Street Lettering project to Lucknow’s leading cultural festival through a public lecture that examined the multifarious reasons why she documents letterforms on public signage. She illustrated her motivations, which ranged from a curiousity for local histories to an interest in the constraints of different materials and techniques, and building typologies of letterforms to memorialising diversions from canonical forms, using her vast collection of lettering photographs from around the country, and from Lucknow, in particular.

She was joined on stage by Mohd. Rafi Sahab, a sign painter from Machli Mohal, who gave a live sign-painting demonstration, shared stories from his four-decades long painting career, and answered audience questions with her.