Workshops & Lectures

As a design practitioner whose work focuses on under-represented cultures and scripts, Pooja spoke about the need to don the additional hat of a documentarian to participate in the creation of design resources and archives needed to succeed as an individual and a community. Among the projects she highlighted was India Street Lettering, discussing what an asset it has been to her practice by teaching her to look beyond the confines of typographic expression that she learned in educational environments.

For the staff at Monotype, Pooja put together a short talk outlining lessons for Indic typeface design that can be drawn from the works of local sign-makers in India. Challenging the conventions established by the Western design canon, she touched upon ideas of stylistic appropriateness, technological limitations and typographic niceties.

Her presentation was complemented with a display of books, zines and other materials about lettering and urban signage from around the world for the group’s perusal.

At community-driven conversations during TypeLab Asia, Pooja gave a talk about India Street Lettering that emphasised that photographing street signs is only the first step in the making of this archive. She explained her work of annotating and geo-tagging the images she captures, and how that helps identify patterns and paradigms that inspire deeper engagement and research, which in turn form the bed rock of outreach activities like type walks and zines. Pooja also showcased physical pedagogical tools she is experimenting with, such as the manuscript-format zine pictured below, which offers an interactive way to engage with the archive in classroom environments.

For intermediate students of publication design at the Bangalore campus of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Pooja facilitated a workshop centred on the documentation of street lettering, and the possibilities of storytelling that offers.

Armed with a brief introduction about the typographic environment of the neighbourhood, students first went on an exploratory type walk around Ulsoor. Once back in the classroom, they were introduced to different approaches they could take to organise the audio and visual content, as well as stories they had gathered. Working in groups, they brainstormed ideas to share the most remarkable observations they had made, and finally made prototypes for zines that tell different typographic stories from the area.