India Street Lettering: A Typographic Archive in the Making @ Bangalore International Centre

Categories

Posted on

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. I improved the annotation system for the photographs as a result, and during the talk, focused on highlighting the different connections and patterns that the collection throws up. I complemented that with peeks into various books from around the world that also document street lettering, opening up the conversation about the different lenses through which we may view this or any other archive of this sort.

I also debuted the first set of India Street Lettering zines at the talk, briefly introducing them and talking about how they are born out of the impulse to look deeper into public signage and the relationships with material, function, history and design that they embody.

The talk was recorded and is now available to view on BIC’s website.

  • In Pursuit of Typographic Cityscapes

    In Pursuit of Typographic Cityscapes

    A look back at a zine-making workshop that I facilitated for students of publication design at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (Bangalore), which was focused on documenting and sharing street lettering from the neighbourhood of Ulsoor.

  • Letter by Letter: Short Film & Exhibition

    Letter by Letter: Short Film & Exhibition

    2023 was an exciting year: 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. The film was screened at their annual festival, where I also got the opportunity to mount an exhibition.