 So, Typography Society of India, it is a very proud moment for our organization to have the internationally acclaimed designer, educator and researcher, Dr. Fianna Ross with us today. It is my privilege and honor and a great pleasure to welcome her to the society. She will be talking on research-based practice in designing type for South Asian scripts. Dr. Ross will discuss a design methodology that advocates research-based practice to advance the possibilities for effective visual communication in writing systems beyond those that use the Latin script. Fianna specializes in type design and typography, primarily in Arabic, South Asian and Thai scripts. She has a background in languages with a PhD in Indian paleography, SOAS London University. Fianna is a part-time faculty member of the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading in the UK, where she is a professor in type design. She was the head of the Department of Typographic Development at Linotype. Fianna has designed several typefaces in Indian languages, including Bengali, Devnagari, Ujrati, Malayalam, etc. Her typefaces are considered to be landmarks in the history of Indian typography. For example, Dr. Ross's famous Malayalam font, Panchayri, released in the 70s, is still the most popular body copy font in Malayalam, extensively used in traditional as well as new media. Fianna works as a consultant, type designer, author and lecturer. Her recent design work has been in collaboration with Tom Holloway, John Hudson, and Nilakart Shatri Mayum, for clients such as Anandabhasar Patrika, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Monotype and Harvard University Press for the Murthy Classical Library of India. Dr. Ross is the recipient of the SOTA Typography Award and the type director's club medal for her outstanding work in type design and education. On behalf of the organizing committee and the typography society, I extend a very warm welcome to Dr. Fianna Ross. Namaste. Over to you, Dr. Ross. Hello, I feel deeply honored to have been invited to present to the Typography Society of India, and I would particularly like to thank Professor Srikumar for inviting me. Today I would like to discuss a design methodology in the field of typeface design, based upon my experience as a researcher, practitioner and educator. A design methodology that advocates research-based practice to advance the possibilities for effective visual communication. Unlike perhaps a number of you who might be viewing this, and Mutu Nedu Moran who gave the previous fascinating talk, I have never undertaken Latin typography or Latin type design. My field is principally South Asian, Arabic and Thai type development, and it is from this perspective, and particularly South Asian scripts, that I shall be looking at type design issues today, but much of the discussion is of course relevant to all scripts. I do not come from a design background, but a languages and research background studying South Street with Pali, and with a PhD in Indian paleography from Sawas, that is the School of Oriental and African Studies, which is part of a London University. My work time is mainly divided between working at the University of Reading, part-time on teaching, and on research activities as curator of the non-Latin type collection. I have also taught and given lectures and workshops elsewhere in the world, here, as you see here in Switzerland, and then other days of the week, I work from home in Gloucestershire on design work and my writings. And as long as the internet is working, I collaborate with people in different continents. And as you can imagine, since the coronavirus pandemic, I've been working from home. And if you see, even here, a dog barking, or the cows lowing, you will know why. Well, my family background is not English, but multicultural, and there have always been items in different scripts from different cultures at home, wherever I've lived. And this is a detail from one of my father's manuscripts. My venture into type design stemmed from my love of Indian literature. I studied Sanskrit and Pali in order to be able to read texts in the original languages, and not through Rudyard Kipling or Hem and Hesse's re-workings in English or German. And I was also aware that the beauty of the literature, such as Kalidas's Megaduta, was much by the beauty of the Indian scripts, yet I noticed that such beauty was not as a rule reflected in the quality of the publication's typography. And I think we can all agree that the importance of visual communication and therefore to have the graphic design cannot be overestimated. It is essential for the successful dissemination of ideas and information, and remains as crucially important today as when Emperor Ashoka's rock edicts were carved in the third century BCE. And we are aware that scripts serve as vital tools for all manner of textual communication, even in areas where there's been a long-standing oral tradition, as in many parts of South Asia. And I think it's useful to situate these topics in context by reflecting that most of the world uses writing systems other than Latin, but most typeface designs so far have been created for the Latin script. I know that printing in Asian scripts predates that in Latin, not only by means of xylography, but also by movable type in East Asia. Metal type is also known to have been successfully produced in Korea in the 13th century, so predating Gutenberg. And this is an image from the world's earliest known complete and dated printed book, which is in Chinese. Today I'm narrowing the focus to the scripts of South Asia, which provide a visible voice to over one-fifth of the world's population. And particularly to those of the Indian subcontinent, which according to reliable sources and tourist use of some 780 different languages and 68 scripts, employed by many millions, or rather hundreds of millions, is shown here. And for those of us who are engaged in type design and even multi-script type design, it is useful to note that even when pared down to a UI font, these scripts which demonstrate great visual diversity also show some affinity to each other on account of their common derivation from the Brahmi script. And this diversity and affinity is evident here with actual words or at least typeface names. This list shows one weight of the first digital South Asian fonts created during the early 1980s, Atlanta type UK under my watch, with a drawing office staffed many years only by women. It says 1990, but they began the late early and then into the late 1980s. So this work in close collaboration with our overseas colleagues in South Asia contributed to the reading experience of millions of readers, as during the last two decades of the 20th century, with these fonts, Lana type had 90% of the Indian and that killer newspaper market. Now, we had thought that this development of digital fonts in the 1980s would immediately give rise to a panoply of new original creative designs that regrettably this has hardly been the case. These typefaces are still in use today, will be often cloned form, which perhaps highlights the fact that in the 21st century, there remains a recognized paucity of fonts to serve the needs of many linguistic communities, especially in comparison to Latin, in terms of the range and the quality of designs available in usable formats. This is evidenced by the example of these four daily Bengali newspapers from Kolkata. And although this image doesn't show the most recent additions, the point is still valid. They all use the same body text face that is one of the type Bengali, usually called a BP Bengali is a BP that is on the example of trigger. The only ones to license it. And then use paper is shown top left here. In 2019, one community was still waiting on the font that could send SMS text messages by phone in the native script. New developments have rectified this, but there remain issues regarding input methods like a well designed fonts for some scripts, or even a dearth of fonts that are unicode compatible to represent some languages. However, we are indeed on the cusp of improved global textual communication, as we witness current efforts impelled by internationalization and facilitated by existing and emerging technologies. Well, my concern is principally for text typefaces, particularly for sustained reading. So this differs from the informal styles that Mutru was showing earlier this month. It's my contention that sound research underpins best practice and vernacular type design actually function in practice to deliver effective means of typographic communication. Well, I hope to demonstrate this by showing you a few design projects that span well over 30 years. Clearly an understanding of the writing system is essential when embarking on any design. This is in researching revered manuscripts, noteworthy inscriptions and analyzing past and current practices in typefinding, typographic conventions, script requirements, as well as cultural traditions that help us make intelligent decisions and contribute to best practice, whether it be for Devan Agri, Arabic, Latin, or Tibetan, etc. She developed his or her visual perception skills, approaching scripts and resources without preconceptions. And I use this character as a reminder to students that they shouldn't look for equivalence in the Latin script, as demonstrated by this new world three in the Kamala script. Regarding a few real projects that illustrate how research underpin the design process. The first example of research had formed the basis of my first design project in 1978, namely Lana type Bengali for the already mentioned renowned Kolkata newspaper and publishing house and underpins our Patrick ABP. As you will know, ABP has a long history of Bengali publishing was instrumental in implementing the Bengali script on the hot metal line of time machine, a machine that was preferred for newspaper composition. On the top here, the British line of type factory can be seen in the background with line of type machines destined for Kolkata. For 40 years, ABP's daily Bengali newspaper was constrained by the line of types reduced character set shown here that comprised around 100 sorts rather than the customary 510 foundry type. The light of the old characters had to share the same with as you could possibly gather from this diagram, or this font synopsis. Furthermore, the technology would not commit kerning so val signs were displaced, as we can see. But crucially, it did enable the wide dissemination of information through newspaper publishing. And in 1978 upon ABP's decision to transfer from hot metal directly to digital technology, so by glass film setting along correspondence and then, and then association with ABP followed. And I was assisted by Dr. Terrapada Mukherjee, my then PhD tutor at SOAS, and the artwork was created by the supremely talented type designer, Tim Holloway. And Dr. Mukherjee's guidance and therefore consulted manuscripts and early printed works to comprehend how the beautiful Bengali script that become fixed in type by the earliest publications that had deliberately simplified the Bengali script and introduced word spacing and other type of typographic conventions. So on the right, you see the earliest successful Bengali font. And on the left, you see one of the manuscripts that we know the France creators had signed off. We looked at slightly later on historical models such as these types based on letterforms of the Bengali writing master Calico Maro Raya, and we consulted font synopsis a foundry type previously used by ABP. And we were intent on redressing the clumsy forms created by the restrictions of the hot metal line attack machine that have become the daily experience encountered by newspaper readers for four decades. And these legacy is still visible in contemporary practice. So this newspaper headline shows the lack of kerning and characters constructed by ill fitting components that should have a seamless join. As shown here, where the green circles indicate where they should be kerning and the red circle seamless joining. So we decided to stretch the possibilities of Kerning vial signs afforded by digital typesetters by Kerning in both directions, as the word pretty here requires. And at Lana type we work with programmers to develop software that allowed the accurate placement of vial signs for digital fonts, as you can see here. Remember these are the days long before open term features. And we created new solutions for keyboarding and ABP with the first to adopt a phonetic keyboard that we invented at Lana time, which enabled the king of contextual forms that is conjuncts and ligatures file signs for Indian and later other salvation scripts. And importantly, it enabled the use of standard keyboard hardware. The phonetic keyboard also no longer constrained character set sizes. In other words, technology first developed in 1978, greatly influenced and facilitated Indian script design. Consequently, it enabled the reintroduction of letter shapes especially conjuncts that had not been seen in newspapers for some 40 years, and you see a small selection. And ABP true to their enduring pioneering spirit felt that the benefits of the new Bengali design for newspaper composition overcame any necessity to acquiesce to read conservatism. There is a slight error here in this trial setting. But you can see that the resulting design, which first saw publication in 1982 provided economies of space comparison to the earlier metal rendition. And the also is enabled the creation of new standards of typography. Furthermore, establish the design process for other fonts we undertook at Lana time, at first specifically for the Indian Express group of Mr. Ramnat Goenka, who regretted he did not need Lana type Bengali, but required many other scripts designed to the same standard. Other newspaper clients with these typefaces included the Times of India Malayama Norama Inadu and others. Well returning briefly to Bengali digital type development. Despite for Cyphus initial complaints regarding the seemingly retrogressive reintroduction of manuscript letterforms, the Lana type Bengali typeface has become ubiquitous for Bengali composition in India and Bangladesh. Lana type Bengali or rather ABP Bengali has been described by one scholar as the Times and Helvetica West Bengal. While I'm visiting the ABP offices in 2008 in Kolkata, long after I'd ceased working at Lana time with then chief editor of the Exakar, pointed out ABP's long felt need of over 30 years for more typefaces than just one in two weights. They wanted the additional extra bold weight requested from Lana type back in the early 1980s that never came to fruition. But they urgently needed a new voice and low contrast typeface for differentiation and for the launch of a new daily metric newspaper develop. Therefore the kind of research materials that we have just had a glimpse of in turn underpin the development of the low contrast Sarkam typeface in open type format for ABP. We had developed a common language to discuss issues across continents with the newspaper editors who kept us abreast of evolving language requirements. Well for this project Tim and I needed to work with large drawing sizes, and we drew inspiration again from a range of resources to overcome problems the chief editor had identified in existing low contrast designs, which he had found suitable, such as these. In fact, I've been suggested that the problem we needed to deal with when designing a low contrast Bengali typeface was that of a quote, having too many tenants in the attic. And we experimented with how to prevent a sense clashing using methods that we had observed in manuscripts held at the British library. For some Trump lawyer and other effects documented here. I obtained the chief editor's approval during another visit to Calcutta. We also angled subscripts so that the bold weight did not sit too deep and demanded too much, and that it would not demand too much letting for newspaper setting. And perhaps get a better idea from these font lab images of these angles attachments. We conducted the usual trials and testing and delivered just in time for the launch of the 31st of August 2012. So ABP and their publications now had two typefaces designed some 30 years apart by the same team, the additional systems of new like us. And following a commission from our roots, our car in December 2015, with Nila cash working in India, me working in the UK, john Hudson of tarot typeworks undertaking production in Canada. We delivered the extra ball font some 30 years late. We designed for ABP chief editors, 70th birthday. And it first appeared on the newspaper stands in Calcutta in December 2015. This is the first edition that used it. And we have continued in recent years to design more typefaces to afford different voices for the newspaper. Like this one shown here as a heading and drop initial. This is a body copy in the cultural pages of the London, the South Patrick newspaper, which, according to recent figures continues to be the most read daily. And this typeface ABP 2015 which never lost its working name is shown again here in a spread which I believe demonstrates typographic excellence. No matter how well designed or executed a typeface can be depends on its user to reveal its qualities. And recently it is heartening to see that printed newspapers continue to flourish in South Asia, although in the time of this coronavirus pandemic have been difficulties. Well my 40 year relationship with ABP led to a recent request to work with Saffron brand consultants in designing with me look at the new identity logos and taglines for the ABP network channels across a number of scripts. This research based design methodology has been responsible for the projects. The project Adobe Dev and Agri comprises another research driven project. It commenced in 2005 and was designed in collaboration with Tim Holloway and with assistance in production by John Hudson again. And it relied on research for information and inspiration to fulfill the grief of designing the screen as well as print to answer business needs. I was already fully conversant with the history of Dev and Agri types, such as the foundry types shown here. And had a complete understanding of the standard techniques for Dev and Agri hand composition, as well as the constraints of the hot metal Dev and Agri renditions, which was slightly better than those of Bengali. And also, I was aware of the few Dev and Agri from setting tents. My studies had informed the development of a monotype Dev and Agri digital fonts, whose original letter forms were designed by Matthew Carter for film setting, based on Nenaya Saga types shown in Bapura S. Mike's book. Now, although with Matthew and my team we revised a number of characters for digital site setting, and we added some 200 lifts. Incidentally, I feel very fortunate to have met like in my early days. As in line attack Dev and Agri, we were keen to follow the stroke modulation the Indian pen for the Adobe Dev and Agri. This, as you well know, is the reverse the Latin pen, whereby the strokes thicken when balls meet the vertical strokes. During this convention it's essential is essential to readability, particularly for immersive reading, as can be seen if the Latin was first using the Indian pen. Being with a familiar with different imprints spanning over two centuries of notable scientific texts was helpful at a later stage of the project to establish which Sanskrit forms should be included for this and other projects. These Sanskrit forms are those on the right, which are also preferred for Nepali. And the analysis of authoritative manuscripts enabled us to determine the precise position of marks, a facility now embedded in all open type fonts. And therefore the Anna Swara, as you can see here, here need not be confined to being situated over the right vertical stems as limitations of many software programs had previously dictated. So many readers became accustomed. And this below is a partial test which runs to some 50 pages need to wait. Well the removal of character set restrictions enabled the careful design of fully integrated conscience of which this is just a selection. So to summarize our research of past lettering and composing practices informed our use of type design and development tools to answer the brief set by Adobe. The starting font, which covers another number of languages with this script comprises some 800 glyphs in each weight. As usual, the font is not always used as intended. It has also been used in political campaigns, but I've deliberately framed from showing you. As I mentioned, we were keen to observe the stroke modulation of Indian penmanship in new original designs. And here you can see how the lettering trials fed into the final design. And the typical North Indian stroke modulation needs to be observed even in low contrast designs, which are seemingly more linear. We were keen to avoid Latinization that was evident in some funds. And our answer in the 1980s had been this typeface Rahini, which over two decades later informed the Nienmela UI design commissioned by Microsoft. And here you can see within the same font difference stroke modulation of the Devan Agri and Latin. Here, and here, and here. The removal of constraints on font file sizes means that all language variations may if required be housed within one font and be accessible by means of language tags. And each Nienmela UI font of now more than 10 scripts contains over 4000 glyphs. So of course, this is just part of the font. So the final project I'd like to mention is that commissioned by Harvard University Press for the multi-classical library of India, MCLI, funded by Dr. Rohan Moti. It is a truly transcontinental project and one that is near to my heart, as it was Indian literature that first brought me into the field of typography and type design. Before MCLI, which was to be an ever-expanding series of volumes of face-in-page translations, John Hudson and I were commissioned to design a set of custom Indian script typefaces. And Dr. Ratna Ramlavan was commissioned to design the interior of each volume. The brief in essence was to undertake a contemporary approach to traditional typeforms. But bearing in mind that the typefaces were to represent classical Indian texts, they needed to be appropriate in style for approval by literary scholars, and yet appeal to the modern young Indian reader. Now the range of scripts was broad, but did not include any with which we were not already familiar. And happily a number of the proposed classical texts were also well known to me, Dr. Ratna. But all scripts raised interesting issues during their design, and for the sake of brevity, I will highlight just one aspect that relates to two designs, that of stroke modulation. The first being in relation to the design for the Punjabi text in the Gomukhi script. Now Gomukhi has a small character set, but the challenge was to develop a style that was in keeping with the designs for the other scripts such as Devan Agri and in harmony with the face-in-page English translation. In Punjabi typography in the Gomukhi script, the preference since the mid-20th century has been for low contrast typefaces, as you see here, even for the printing of devotional literature, as well as newspaper publications. However, such a style was out of keeping with our brief. We therefore felt it important to do consult the original manuscript tradition to assist us in developing a new approach to Gomukhi typeface design. We were extremely fortunate in being able to access the Punjabi manuscripts in the British Library through the curator Dr. Marina Chenini, and also to have the advice of Professor Chakal, the translator of the first volume, and whom I've known from my so-as university days. Well, under their expert guidance, we were able to analyse the different styles that were apparent, evidently from different scribal traditions that had influence in the Punjabi. And the manuscript that took our breath away and was the most informative was the prayer book of Rani Jindan. This informed the construction of the letter forms and the stroke modulation, and you can see a page of this here. I cannot show you details as this is a devotional text, and I'm not allowed to zoom in or crop it, but the British Library have allowed me to show it to you. Professor Chakal kindly provided feedback as the typeface developed and advised the development of particular stylistic sets to prevent clashes of ascenders with superior marks. Of course, the final image of any typeface is mediated by the typographer, the user. Guided by Ratna's experience, together we worked on testing some of the more challenging aspects of textual composition. In fact, all of us being obsessed with details, we undertook seemingly endless tests with the final text to obtain the best results possible, with the software on which John spent considerable time pushing to its limits to deliver the hopeful type of thing. And we were pleased that upon publication, the first book in each of these Indian script typefaces, the fonts are freely available for non-commercial use. Well, with respect to the Kanata typeface undertaken a few years later, the design took us on a different journey. We were familiar with the manuscript tradition for this and other Indian scripts, South Indian scripts, of the use of the stylus and palm leaf that created monolidnya letter forms. And we were fully aware of the preferred high contrast design favored in typography. We were familiar with the hot metal type, as shown in this newspaper briefing, but we were more interested in researching early 19th century very readable type of the Basel mission press, and also those produced by the Gujarat type foundry during the 1930s. Now my experience with digital type development for line attack made me aware that these did possess antiquated forms that should be avoided, such as these here. And I was mindful of a crucial decision we had made for the early digital fonts in the 80s and issues we'd experienced in trying to draw for dynamic effect, but gently rising, gently rising horizontal top line, which was impossible to render smoothly in early digital type. So we just had to straighten it. So we decided against reintroducing this rising stroke, as there were other elements that imbue vitality to the design from North Canada. And with regard to the overall stroke modulation, we also decided to avoid the extreme high contrast that is witnessed in some publications in order to maintain harmony with the other designs, but to also ensure optimum readability for the text. It was a truly collaborative venture. And we benefited greatly from the expertise and information provided to us by Harvard University Press, who also provided us with feedback from the editorial board, the composites and the translators. And we are delighted with the reception this project has so far received. For me it was a privilege to be working right now the books designer as our priority was that the typography should reflect the beauty of its literary content. Now clearly the intended purpose of the typeface design, its intended users and readership are fundamental to finding the appropriate voice and therefore its styling. To consider whether typeface that we use for a specific genre in an extensive or limited range of types, dials and sizes, whether the print and screen, whether it was a UI default font on the mobile device is crucial to the design process in any script. And of course as we saw earlier one can never anticipate how a typeface might also be used, particularly when the choice of fonts is poor. We may design for eight point newsprint, but find it used on the side of a pink fan or for posters around her. As you can see by the camera shake nearly got run over, trying to take any major of a poster in the city. Personally, I do not really like to discuss my work in public, but I realize that documenting in some ways such case studies, which allow future practitioners to comprehend how design decisions have been made that affect the visual representation of language is informative. And I am concerned that in the digital age reflections on design practice that we request from our students at Reading, as shown here are and frequently undocumented. Iterations and early samples of design, as shown here are easily deleted and rarely preserved for future researchers and designers. Reliable resources in this field, such as these are for my students. Both published and unpublished are I'm delighted to say growing in. And there is an increasing number of models of good design practice that do see publication, such as this by Vibar Singh. And this one Colopy Kutcher and others. Personally speaking, it's wonderful to work with former students as colleagues. And I do feel fortunate that they are happy to work with me on different projects and in different capacities. But reliable resources, such as these are still scarce, which is why the use of diverse sources, both primary and secondary within and out with the discipline typeface design is essential to inform and inspire this practice. Here, for instance, we find an example of hand painted lettering on the side of a Boston Colcutter. And these letter forms seem to indicate movement, even though the bus is stationary amidst the usual heavy traffic. I would like to conclude by saying that I hope I've shown today why I am keen to advocate a research based design methodology. Which through continued analysis and reevaluation of past and existing practices can utilize the latest digital tools to enhance textual communication, particularly for South Asian writing systems. Thank you. And many thanks to those who contributed images and ideas this. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me. Thank you very much, Fiona, for the wonderful talk and for accepting our invitation. We will move on to the Q&A session now. Hi, good evening. We will start with the. Thank you very much for the wonderful talk and for accepting our invitation. We will move on to the Q&A session now. So I will start with some of the questions I have. Good evening. We will start with the Q&A. Digital technology has changed, has gone through a metamorphosis over the last maybe around 25 years, especially after the Macintosh came and a lot of new software has came. Before that, there was a very different scene. So would you please share some of your experience and your viewpoint on this, you know, the method of designing a font has changed considerably before digital technology and after. And now there are so many softwares available for font designers to work on. So you have seen both the pre digital technology era and the new one. So would you please share some of your experiences and your viewpoints on this. I was actually reflecting on this yesterday. Please tell me if you can't hear me properly. Can you hear me? I was reflecting on this yesterday because I was thinking that the that during my time when I started Atlanta type, there were very limited possibilities for type design, because if you were a type designer and there were very few who call themselves. Type designers, then what happened was that really you wouldn't see any production. You wouldn't see your font actually produced unless you were tied to a particular, you know, engineering companies such as Lana type of a foundry and monotype. And then also the big difference there was that unless you were employed by them. And really what happened was that you might get your designs realized but unless you're a big name. You wouldn't have your name mentioned which actually I'm quite happy about but I feel a lot of people are unacknowledged, but the other problem was that if you designed for Lana type, the fonts would not work with a monotype machine or any other machine. You were stuck into particular systems. And so I think it's, it's wonderful that the tools that have happened what has happened has been phenomenal. And I think the opportunities for designers that they don't have to embed themselves with particular large foundries or small funders there is a choice or they can work individually. I think that has changed a great deal. And also the software that we were struggling to develop 20 years ago or whatever for positioning of mattress etc. Now is embedded within the font itself and you can make choices. There are still choices that I fight for that I feel we could have done with the software like deciding where we want the ref in certain conversations that now I don't have have the choice but I think that has really opened up the possibilities to really enrich the type of graphic palette for many, many scripts. And so I think it's a very exciting time now. And can you share some of your experience on how do you do the font testing and evaluation. After the font is designed. What kind of work you do in terms of testing it out and you know evaluating it. For example, do you do any of those visual ergonomics tests like I moment recorded tests or things like that. Well, at liner type, there used to be two kinds of tests that we would do so I would do tests which I still do now, but there would be also. But for newspaper composition they would also be someone testing the machine to see how many characters a minute it war characters and second it would spit out so that was very important for them for speed. So a lot of the, the work I also did was font specifications and the layout so it could operate very fast. Now for testing. I'm still very analog so I will, I print a lot. And I do a huge number of tests so you saw a tiny bit of the Adobe Devan Agri one. And that will go on for 50 pages I will I will test every subscript with and superscript with every character. I will do spacing tests, I will do tests with all kinds of modifiers with punctuation. Yeah, copious testing. And I think that the fitting of the typeface is extremely important. And particularly as I designed for text typefaces. It is very important and I remember going to. I was in Mumbai, many years ago. And there was someone who wouldn't believe me that line type which I was still then that we didn't have an algorithm for spacing. And in fact, I have one PhD student who now is working on a new version of whether it's possible for Latin. But I do think it's really important the spacing the space the white that surrounds and is enclosed within the character is as important as the black. And so, you know, spacing takes a lot of time but when you get it right with the first 10 or 20 characters, then that will just set up the pattern. The pattern very well. So I test on different printers I test on screen, but because I am. I'm still using font lab for testing and I'm still using an old version of prints. So font lab people please hear me because the new one won't print. Um, but what's wonderful why I like to test straight from the font is I know that it's not there's not a problem with InDesign or any other layout software. If there is a problem. It's our problem and we have to fix the font problem. It's not something that's happening with with with layout software. And with working on the moody with with right now we did a lot of tests with InDesign as well because that was what was going to be used but we also did tests in Microsoft Word, which you know the translators might have used so they were there were different means of testing. Yeah. And you're one of the few designers who are into academics also. So I really many of your students are attending today's session. And you have taught many of my students also and you have a very large number of student fan following. So can you share your experiences in the academics. Yes, I sort of fell into that really. I had always appreciated research research based practice and in fact I started as I mentioned I started as a researcher. And the reason I got into the reason I got I ended up taking over the drawing office very reluctantly at Lana type was because we were embarking on the Bengali digital forms, and there was talk of just converting the Lana type hot metal and I was very opinionated. And so was Dr Tara Pada Mukherjee and we said no no no you can't do this. And so I then started working and looking at the designs and finding that with Tim Holloway there was a designer who could put into practice could visibly actually execute my vision and with information from Tara Pada Mukherjee and from the Dhaka Brothers. And so, you know, I took that role on and then at Lana type. I started introducing once a week seminars on Indian orthography, because I said you can't, you know, you, you can't decide unless you know what you're doing. And we have a lot of we had wonderful colleagues at Lana type India. They say to me what do you need and I say I need to know what the character set is that they're using I need to see examples of newspapers so we had all this pooling of skills as pooling information. And I always, for some reason or other, after finishing my PhD, which I did whilst at Lana type. I decided I would publish my findings because there wasn't enough literature in this field. I the printing history like pre old car which was, you know, great night was the best but there wasn't enough to to support other, you know, work practitioners or historians. And so, and then Reading University said, would you come and give some talks here on academic writing and, you know, so I ended up doing that and then Jerry Leonidas the head of the type design course said, you know, you've done a lot of practice what about giving feedback. And, but I do think it's, we've had some excellent students from you, I will say that we've had some wonderful students. Well, I'm delighted they still happy to work with me. And, and I love to see their, their progress. And they have done excellent work and, and they come a lot of them come from a design background which is the opposite to me so we, we, we feed, you know them with with archives and archive a material to enrich their knowledge. And they can take it, they can take it on from there but I feel that it is wonderful to see younger people progress and come extremely accomplished designers. And I'm very very pleased to have been just a part of that. So, what is the design methodology you follow every font designer has their own design methodology. I have met many youngsters who write a way to start everything on the digital platform. But there are some font designers who prefer to do everything by hand. They prefer to do that and unless he is very happy with the hand drawn image, he won't allow them to scan it and so everyone has their own methodology of design so what kind of a method or thing you follow. What I like to say actually on on that is also particularly for students I teach. I feel it's really important that they find their own best method. So for me, it, it, you know, it doesn't matter whether they, you know, some will will start sketching and or some will start with calligraphy, because they need to find how the pen moves and to think about the tool itself and execute the design. We'll go straight on to that. To me, it's whatever I like, but the other thing I think is really important as an educator is that working with people who produce designs students who produce designs is is very different in the education of field to the studio. And I feel myself that it's really important that we don't act as if we're a studio so much to the possible annoyance of students at the beginning. I try not tell them what to do but I ask them why they're doing this. And I also say I don't actually have to like what you do. I just think whatever you do it needs to be the best that you can do. And so I feel it's very important that they find a voice so I'm very keen that when any of these scripts that have been produced by students to a level that's probably when they leave is just below professional, and then they can then develop, but they found their own voice and you can't say oh that's a reading style, probably the way they talk about their design and what's underpin their design will be possibly a reading style but otherwise it's they found their voice, and they can experiment they can try out things. I'm very analog. And, you know, I work, I collaborate, and so the designs that I did with Tim Holloway, he would do the lettering I would sketch I won't show anyone my sketches, except the person. I might annotate sketches. He would always work on paper. I know that Neela cash sometimes does it straight on the on the screen. I don't inquire but for me I like to, I like to be able to look at things on paper and different sizes and you can see my board. It's very nice to see that in the background. It inspires me. Can you share your experience with that my name for your design in the late 70s, even today it is considered to be the most popular body copy for them. Well, actually it's that is a pleasure to talk about that because it was actually 1983. And I was told by Lana type, you're going to India next week. And I said, no I can't go to India next week and they said why not I said I'm getting married. And they said who you marrying and I said well rod you know, you know, oh well take him with you. So, we were there on our high moon, but working. And it was the first time that rod had understood what I did, because he came to the meetings and Malayama and Minorama were really welcoming. And they was during Diwali so they, they give us a car and they're very popular obviously so we kept them being offered tea and sorts by anywhere we stopped and they, they send us to Techity Park for the weekend. But I sat down with them and said, what would you, what would you like to do and I explained the phonetic keyboard to them which they really, really liked. But we talked. It was wonderful because I was there, five days speaking with them asking them about the designs. And what I found particularly interesting talking with them was the fact that I said I can't make sense of the thick thin stroke contrast. If you use a pen, it doesn't quite work out the way that some of these display fonts work. Do you want to correct this is no no no no, this is really important. This you need to adhere to. And then I said what about the vowel signs that were put on stalks. If you put hot metal in case they break do you want them attached and they said, we're not too worried about that we're more concerned about the stroke modulation and etc and so I had wonderful inputs. And so, and then again we did a lot of testing but it was it was a real pleasure to sort of work directly with the typographers. We talked about also justification issues, what would break what not, you know, where the vowels, sorry, the modifier mark should be. It was, it was very clear to us what they wanted and then like I still work the same way today is, you know we send samples, you know send 10 characters seven characters or 10 characters and say, you know, these give us feedback this is what we propose to you. And then that will be the DNA if you like for the rest of the character set. And with a BP, we sent three characters. We did the Bengali, the line type Bengali we sent three characters, we sent the car I always start with car is suspicious. And then the car and the bar for Bengali. And I said, we're proposing these changes because the structure of the line time just was. Yeah, terrible. And they said yes please go ahead and that gave us license to alter all the characters. And so it was with the Malaya Manorama and yeah, it was it was a pleasure working there and yeah and witnessing their can their change over to the digital forms, but thank you for your. So this should the passage of time. And after so many years to even today, I think all the magazines I've designed the millennium and all the books I've designed millennium use the same font. And it is very popular with designers as well as readers. But I would like it to encourage new designs. Yeah, I think, and I think that can happen now. I will just read out some of the comments from the audience so many of your students are here. Kimya Gandhi says hello Fiona lovely to see you. So Muthu Nadamaran says thank you Fiona good to hear you again. Sridhar Murti also saying thank you Fiona for the wonderful talk Abhijit Gupta. Suman Bandari and Seema Kamdar saying a trendsetter so lively to design a listen to her that is my wife. Give me a comment. And then and then designs and research. Thank you Fiona this is great motivation to carry forward Guru Mukhi type design. Thank you for sharing your positions. That's not Ramadan. Saying great to see such a generous presentation Fiona. Sridhar Murti, please also talk about the logo. Well, I spent some time at in our do with it in our do. And again, it was talking about what kind of stroke. Modulations wanted because we knew that the manuscripts were quite light. We knew that the tendency was not to be as strong as the Canada, not such a high contrast. Yeah. And we also knew that we were very conscious of the word count for the newspaper how many words to the line. Could be, it could be achieved with within the columns as well, because in fact, you'll be able to tell it say whether this is true or not but as far as I remember up till the 70s there was still rationing of newsprint in India. So, you know, we were very conscious of, of how tight we could get it that was still readable and tell a good words as we found in them in the Murti design are actually quite long. And so it was important to look at that so we did we looked at a foundry type that was particularly liked. And we were also very aware that the monotype, which was much better than the line of type metal. There was a lot that I can't remember. But the monotype one, the problem was to avoid tight breakage that made some of the subscripts very large because they were worried about that. So we did, I spent at least a week in Hyderabad, I think, and also working with topographers, one of the calligraphers I think he was doing the heading type basis. And yeah, so we, we did a lot of testing the phonetic keyboard was really important for that so we had, because up to then they'd have these huge keyboards, which were very expensive and custom made. And we introduced the phonetic keyboard so I do remember the figures I remember we had 90 characters including Latin punctuation was on this phonetic keyboard, and you just had characters of the syllabary and some extra modifiers and ligatures like Sri. And then with those and then in the font we only had 360 characters. And with that I tested 19,000 combinations per weight. Yeah. Really a long process. So fitting we had to introduce certain routines to fit the spacing of the, the kerning file signs and then if they have the other ones that went underneath the zero width ones so that there was, you know, but yeah, it fitted well, the fitting for tell a goo is is. Yeah, very important. I usually show that if I'm talking about fitting I usually show tell a goo. The excite has to be compromised a lot because of the mother's coming on top as well as at the bottom. Yeah. You're another student of yours. So wonderful to see you Fiona, and thank you for sharing all those stories with us. Thank you very much. We have come to the conclusion of the session. I will just take a minute to share the screen and to thank the all our partners. Give me a minute. So I would like to thank my colleagues in the organizing team. Dr. And I'd like to thank the has geek team for all the technical support and your wonderful for us for the live streaming and all the publicity. The typography society would like to thank Dr. Fiona Ross for accepting our invitation and on everybody who has participated in this. Thank you very much. I felt truly honored to be invited to be invited in here. We are all very happy to have you as our speaker. You learned a lot. Thank you so much.