This project is about Odia calligraphy, Through this project I have explored different aspect of Odia calligraphy, This project was done in various stages some work was done in a workshop taken By Sir Santosh Kshirsagar, some were my own exploration, and with Ektype/Whitecrow typefoudry (I was working on a calligraphic approach for Odia script)

 

In diverse country like India, one can find such a huge diversity of beautiful languages. One of such language is Odia it is primarily spoken in the state of Odisha which is situated on the eastern coast of India. It is also one of the classical languages of India. Odia letter form traditionally is monolinear in nature because once odia was inscribed on palm leaves which led to Odia having  a mono linear form.

 

Research Data was collected through photo documentation, interviewing teachers, museum experts, artists and visits to the National Achive, New Delhi The research involved finding information about history of the script, the cultural trends affecting the script, anatomy of the letterforms and finding relevant examples for reference, to be incorporated while designing the calligraphy manual.National Archives of India, Odisha State Museum has a significant amount of books which answered a lot of the research questions by providing details about the history of Odisha, the Odia language and Odia script, and d
etails about Palm leaf manuscripts. A visit was made to Odisha to gather an understanding about how children learn such a beautiful and complex language.
 

This was my attempt of exploring the letterform 'kha' in the Odia script

In the summer of 2014, I did an internship at a typefoudry Ektype/Whitecrow based out of Mumbai where I got a chance to learn calligraphy and I experimented on how to approach the Odia script from the lens of calligraphy with a motive of developing a calligraphy manual for Odia script. which would be a small start towards a standardized approach for Odia calligraphy writing and would serve as a resource for type designers and people related to this field.
 

The project was presented in Typoday conference 2015, You can follow the link below to read about it

 

 

I still continue to work on this project and take this forward.

 

If you have any queries or feedback I would really appreciate that. If you can help me in gathering more research material like script sample images, handwriting sample please write to me at Manishminz@hotmail.com | manish.m@nid.edu