In May, I facilitated a three-day workshop at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bangalore that centred on documenting street lettering. Students of publication design explored public lettering and signage in Ulsoor, and then made prototypes for zines that tell typographic stories from the neighbourhood. The activity was a way to introduce them to new […]

2023 was an exciting year for India Street Lettering: I received a small grant from the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) as part of their B•LORE programme to make a short film about street lettering in Bangalore’s M.G. Road. I collaborated with my friend and photographer, Harshay Jha, to create a short typographic tour through this […]

In the summer of 2023, I took the plunge to turn my typographic discoveries and theses from India Street Lettering into honest-to-God printed matter: pint-sized, self-published zines that each centre on a tiny sliver of public lettering in India, catalysed by a medley of influences such as material, script, location, function and historical context. The […]

Last year in June, I was invited to give a talk about this project at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC). It was my first time presenting India Street Lettering in this fashion, and that prompted a lot of thinking about what I would like to achieve with this effort and how I am getting on. […]

Organised by the Bangalore International Centre, I conducted an updated type walk in M.G. Road in June. Using the signs and landmarks of M.G. Road as provocation, I talked about the myriad letterforms on display on shop and building fronts — from fast disappearing neon signs to ubiquitous sans serifs and multiscript branding — and […]

This is an abridged form of an that essay first appeared as Issue 7 / A Type Tour of Indiranagar of my newsletter I Spy with my Typographic Eye. Read the original, which includes a look at Kannada newspaper nameplates, and subscribe to the newsletter. Last autumn, I found myself in Bangalore and as I spent […]

This is an abridged form of an that essay first appeared as Issue 3 / Letters of Connaught Place of my newsletter I Spy with my Typographic Eye. Read the original, which includes a list of Instagram accounts that focus on capturing street lettering from Southeast Asia, and subscribe to the newsletter. For some years now, […]

Over on Paper Planes, I wrote about the very personal story of how I began looking out for and documenting the decrepit signs of single-screen cinemas in Delhi about five years ago, and about some of my favourites from the lot. I also drew an illustration of the now-lost façade of Paras Cinema. Read my […]

For a postcard that went as part of Champaca Bookstore’s book subscription parcel focused on English translations of Kannada texts, I drew an homage to one of my favourite Kannada signs in Bangalore, that of the Bengalee Association in Ulsoor. The Kannada is part of a trio of signs, which also includes Latin and Bangla. […]

Last month I conducted my very first type walk in Bangalore. A group of us walked from Koshy’s at Anil Kumble Circle to Cauvery Emporium at the beginning of Brigade Road, and ended the morning with breakfast at India Coffee House. I spoke about a range of subjects — a bit of printing history related […]

I debuted a new walk this month in Delhi’s Nicholson Cemetery, where a group of us got the opportunity to look at some of the oldest Latin letters to be seen in the city: ranging in styles from blackletter to grotesque to tuscan, a few even dating back almost two centuries. We spotted letters on […]

For this year’s edition of #36DaysOfType, I tried to shine a spotlight on the ingenious letter designs of local sign-makers in India. Every day, the letter or number I posted was based on a sign that I have spotted in the wild. The inspiration came from signs in Udaipur (Rajasthan), Panjim and Mapusa (Goa), Mumbai […]

I was thrilled to run an updated avatar of my type walk from Delhi Walk Festival a few times this winter. It follows one of the main market streets in Paharganj, a neighbourhood that has existed since the Mughal era and dates back to the early eighteenth century. We start and finish at two important […]