Workshops & Lectures

In the summer of 2021, Pooja was invited to speak at Adobe Design Mix’s series of remote talks, Design Shots, about her explorations with augmented reality as a way to appreciate street lettering. She shared experiments that used well-known public signage as a trigger to learn type anatomy, recreated unique cityscapes of street lettering that can be used for teaching without bearing the cost and burden of travel; and restored shop signs that can have been damaged, removed or replaced by new ones by superimposing photographs on live video.

With Tanya George, Pooja hosted a session to talk about their processes and perspectives on facilitating type walks. Their walks refocus typographic history, which is usually Western-centric, to stories and uses that can be experienced in local public spaces. They talked about how they frame signs and letterforms to initiate a dialogue with walk participants about viewing this history as more than just an abstract construct only to be read in books, but as something that can be seen in our own neighbourhoods, and interpreted in the context of architecture; social, political and economic developments; and, popular culture.

Through their session, Pooja and Tanya examined how value and prestige is assigned to different typographic objects, and argue that archives and resources, so necessary for type appreciation, need not be in libraries and museums alone. In the absence of readily-available traditional facilities and material, they have seized cities as living, breathing typographic archives, and encourage others to do the same! With the help of virtual tours of their favourite local typographic spots, they shared their love and interest for making all things type more accessible — how and why did they began running type walks, what goes into preparing for one, and what they have learned from successes and failures.

Listen to the talk here.

In an intimate studio talk at Codesign, Pooja reflected on why she facilitates type walks and broke down her methodology for preparing one. She talked about treating the city as one’s own typographic archive and using the letterforms that dot its landscape to ask pertinent questions about design, typography and culture.

This rumination was paired with some of her favourite signs and stories from type walks conducted in Delhi’s Paharganj and Nicholson Cemetry.