 Namaste. Good evening to all of you. Typography Society of India extends a warm welcome to all of you to the 16th edition of Online Design Lecture Series. Today, we have an upcoming typographer from the younger generation. Typography Society of India is committed to give encouragement to all generations of graphic designers and typographers and calligraphers and we are extremely proud to present to you one upcoming designer from the very young generation, Shaili Patel. She is a fresh graduate from the Department of Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Emerson City, Veruda with a keen interest in type design and typography. She has been developing typefaces since three years now in Indian scripts as well as in English. While attending one Milano's display type class at Cooper Union, Shaili designed a high contrast Latin font named Maya with peculiar triangular serifs and lots of interesting improvisations in form. Shaili launched her first type family, Balcony, a type family inspired by safety grills on my fonts in February 2021. Her work has been organized alongside seven other women as women of typographic excellence in the Mali scholarship 2020. By sharp type New York. She is also winner of the prestigious certificate of typographic excellence in 24th annual TDC typeface design competition by the type directors club in the students category. The winning project Balcony has been featured in the Page Magazine, a German publication focusing on the creative industry. Typography Society of India wishes all of you a very happy Diwali. And we are again wishing you all the best and we are proud to introduce you to a very young type designer, Shaili Patel. Over to you Shaili. Thanks for joining in. I want to firstly thank Professor Shaili Kumar and Professor Tarundi for inviting me to speak at the Typography Society of India. I think it's a great initiative. I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from the previous session. So today I'm going to be talking about my typeface Balcony and a couple of other projects that I've done in the Latin script. So Balcony was the first typeface that I've ever designed. It is a very experimental decorative typeface that is inspired by the middle groups that be around us. And so basically the idea started while doing a college project. I have been documenting groups that would resemble any letter forms or motifs or just beautiful designs. Yeah, so I've been documenting these since a long time now and whenever I see these, I kind of resemble letter forms. And once there was a college assignment where I wanted, I was looking for some typeface that was geometric and more specifically I was looking for something that had squareish letter forms. But since I couldn't find anything of such sorts or the very specific thing that I was looking for, I decided to make a typeface of my own using these real patterns that I've been documenting. So as you can see over here how I've taken few motifs and converted them into letter forms. For example, these heart shaped bills are very commonly seen around us. So I just made a heart motif or these arrows resemble. So for that particular assignment, I just had made the base characters that's a few like all the letters, numerals and a few punctuations. And later on, I happened to show this project as in the whole concept to Jocky Hitesh Madhavya and he encouraged me to expand the typeface, like expanded it to a fully functional typeface. And he also helped me out while learning the font editing software and he'd also give me feedback on these letter forms. Also, I would not conduct like tiny surveys where I'll ask my parents or people around me to help me out if they can read these letter forms or not. I need a couple of options all the time for people to select from. So this is the final character set that I'm showing. And so while designing the typeface, I remember I started it an illustrator and whenever I, you know, I could see a second, you know, design language that was being carried out in a few letter forms. I really liked that language. So I created a stylistic set. The first one over here, as you can see, is the first stylistic set. And the second stylistic set is Dingbat, which has the motives of the drills that we see around us. So, yeah, and when expanding the typeface, I had to put die critic marks and usually die critic marks are above or below the letter forms, but I still wanted to confine them into the squarish thing that I was using for all the letter forms for characters. So what I did was I just squeeze them like geometrically the circles remain so close. And so I put the diacritics above and below as they as they were needed. And basically has four ways, like regular medium and bold. And yeah, this is, as you can see over here, you can see how the letter forms look in the four ways and also the stylistic set. So a little more about the process is that, as I said, I started the typeface on illustrator first and then I kind of like I imported it to lips. So what I did was I did not make shapes, I just used these parts to draw my letter form, because they were like geometrics I did not have to do much, but so I use these parts and what I did was, in the instances, I put a parameter for every date or instance where I defined the line width and every instance would take the line width and that's how the typeface was created. And this worked for me because none of my letter forms have no ink traps or where my parts narrow down or get thinner, so it really worked out for me in that case. And this is a screen shot from the interface of how the typeface looked on lips software. And as you can see, because of the parts, they're not shapes, so this is how the interface would look so every time I had to test the typeface I had to generate a file and put it in in design and check it out. So this is the full character set. It has about 650 characters, and there's only uppercase, lowercase, the personal case are hard to find in a square shape. Yeah. And as you can see this is how the patterns are made using the motives of the team that's also you can make patterns of a while using letter forms or punctuation sort of symbols, for example, I've used OK and for the title here. So I've been testing this typeface, and I found out that, you know, it gets it's very decorative you cannot need to go full sentence you just you can use this typeface for a word or for a face. And if the phrase is longer, and you can maybe use it for a popular phase. So I've tried to explain how you can use this typeface by making few specimens. For example, you can use it as a postcard, or you can take these negative, negative parts of the letter forms as different shapes and pattern out of it. Or you can put marks behind them. Maybe you want to make, you know, get a fabricator to make some proper grill out of these typeface on there. Yeah, so maybe you can take like some objects or images and play around with them. And maybe you can use it on for editorial purposes, for a drop cap, or maybe you can use numbers in such a way. So I was designing my first business card, and since that can be the first typeface I designed, so I thought I'll use it in such a way, so this is my current business card, I haven't designed it yet. And this is also an old version that I used for making a sticker with my friends that we made a few stickers for a college event. Can you back me for that? Also, I cut out some coasters and see how I am also very interested in seeing how this typeface can be used and given a physical form to itself. And I do make sure that the typeface isn't only confined to screen or print and can have a physicality for itself. So I was discussing this with my brother, who also happens to be an industrial designer. So he helped me out with a few renders of furniture ideas like this. A coffee table or a couch or some laundry. So earlier this year in February, I launched the typeface on my funds and luckily I've been able to sell a lot of licensed typefaces. Also last year in 2020, I applied for the Mealy Scholarship. Unfortunately, I did not get the scholarship, but they showcased my work among with other seven designers, women, type designers from all over the world. And Balcony is showcased in the women of type section. You can check out other works as well on their website. Also, Balcony won me the TDC certificate of excellence, the 24th TDC awards. And so the winners of the 24 TDC awards were showcased in the Page Magazine. They have a section separately for type and typography as a whole. And Balcony was like mentioned in the article. Page is a German magazine and they focus on a lot of aspects of the creative field. Another typeface that I'm going to talk about is Maya. I designed Maya as a part of my display type class, which is organized by the Cooper Union Supertype. And it was taught by Juan Villano. He is a very well-born designer. He is currently based in New York and he has done a lot for the B-POP community. He has this thing where people can fund for the B-POP community. B-POP is basically brown, indigenous and people of colors. So yeah, I was part of the class. It is a two-month class where Juan teaches how to... He starts from the very basic anatomy of letter forms and then he teaches principles of type design and by the end you have to make a typeface on your own. So by making this typeface, the first thing that we were supposed to do is we were supposed to list out a few adjectives that we want our typeface to look like. I mean, how we want to define our typeface and by that time I came across feminist poems and I came across the poems that I raised by Maya and Chidu. And that really inspired me because that kind of became the defining moment for me. And so I started catching letter forms with different features, but at the same part of time those, you know, those letter forms will define or reflect these strong feminine forms. So over the weeks, when I started, I put a lot of different features into the typeface, but over the weeks one would give feedback every week or twice a week and then we would have guest critiques who also gave us feedback. And that really helped me out and it smoothed in my texture. We filtered out the different features that I was including. So yeah, so this is the base character set. And this was the first time I was working with serifs and it is a tough job to work with serifs because a lot of inner spacing issues and all happening when you're working with serifs and yeah, but it was a fun learning medium for me. So this is the full character set and for now it's just one way, but I do intend to expand the typeface into a family with multiple dates, probably with the optical corrections. Yeah. Another typeface that I recently completed working on is Oprah. We're still juggling with the name, but I really like the name Oprah for this typeface because it is very dramatic. I worked on this typeface for the Indian type boundary and it'll be soon launched from their platforms. Hopefully soon, don't you? And yeah, so Oprah is again a dramatic typeface I'd say because what I've done in this typeface is that all the circular letter forms like O, C, G, the lowercase B, P, D, all these letter forms are circular, like full circles, whereas the other letter forms, I've squeezed them. The other letter forms are basically more condensed than normal and so that you can see the difference and yeah, I've included weights. There are four weights and now it looks, it actually looks. And Satya really gave me the freedom to introduce whatever figures I wanted to. So I introduced a few alternates. Also, I made a lot of ligatures and these are the upper case ligatures. And I think the more features you add in a typeface, the more interesting it becomes. So now I wanted to play around and see how many ligatures I could make. I think I made more ligatures than these but then I had to cut them. Then these are the lowercase ligatures. And then while expanding, what I did was I made two sets of accents on the left, the accents above A. They are the normal width accents, whereas on the O. So every letter form which is wider, I made another set of accents for them which are also wide in the width. So I did the same thing for lowercase as well. And apart from the normal numerals, what I did was I introduced old style numerals. I'm a huge fan of old style numerals. Also I introduced superior and inferior numerals. Then I introduced a long set of fractions. And this is the full character set so far. It's been a really fun journey to make these. And as for the use, I think the typeface can be used for something that is in a luxury like cosmetic brand or fashion brand or hospitality. So yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for wearing me. And yeah, you can get in touch with me on Instagram. This is my Instagram handle. And yeah, the end of this session. Shaili, thank you very much for the interesting talk you gave. We were all looking forward to hearing about balcony because it is a very, very interesting font. So a lot of people including students and professionals, we found the anatomy of balcony very, very fresh and very innovative. Nobody has thought about coming up with such a font. And what you said is very interesting that the implications of this, the possibilities of this being used as three dimensional artifacts. It is a very interesting thing. It opens up a lot of possibilities for product designers and three dimensional explorations. A lot of that can be done in this font. Very interesting. Can you talk a little bit about Maya because personally I found it very interesting. And especially the lower case Y and F. I found it very cute. It is very, very high contrast. But the forms, there are a lot of innovations in many characters and it is very interesting. So can you share some more experience, your thoughts about how this Maya started. And how you developed it further and how did you manage to get this kind of innovative forms in this kind of short, lower case Y, F and J. The name of you. All the characters are very interesting, but three of them are very, very cute. So can you talk a little bit more about Maya. Sure. So actually before we started working on our typefaces, we had a lot of exercises how to develop ideas. So there is this platform called type cooker. So we used to do a lot of exercises from type cooker. And yeah, so that helped me a lot. And so before we also started developing the typefaces, what we had to do is we had to, you know, list out a few words describing words how we want our typeface to look like. And later on we had to start sketching and develop the idea. So if I say feminine, so feminine can be a lot of things. If I say that playful, the playful can be a lot of things. So that's how I started in a sketching thing. And I saw I used a lot of different genres of design. And I saw what all I could do. And while sketching one of the ideas, I came up with these triangular terminals. And I really liked that particular feature. And I tried to incorporate that feature in more characters I could. No, but what led you to making this kind of very peculiar curve structure in F and Y and J? So I don't think it's something new. I have seen some similar features in some existing typefaces. So I just tried to make them in a sharp or pointy, I'd say, in that angle. But what led you to make a structure like a triangle? So you cannot call it series force, you can't call it terminal. You know, you need to give a good new name to it. But how did you get this triangle as the stroke ending? Well, I just say that I sketched and I just like that form and I took it. And what are your future plans as a type design? Well, I do not have any future plans as such. But I do want to work more in index scripts. That's what I know. I see that the index type design scene is a very young in itself compared to Latin. So yeah, I think there is a lot of room to play around with. And yeah, I just want to see how I can play with these scripts and I want to explore what all new things we can do with them. What kind of work are you doing in here with your Madhatran Gujarati script? Are you planning on doing anything now? Well, currently I have just started working on a project that I started earlier that is Climax Gujarati. So I am in the process of completing it right now. It needs a lot of work. So yeah, this year I do plan to complete it hopefully. Is it a body copy book or a headline book? I would not say it is a body copy. It is a very display typeface. It is a Gujarati companion of the typeface, which is a Climax standard. It has a plus and a minus weight, which is black and hairline. So I started with the black and later I formed the hairline as well. There was a time in MSU, now City Faculty of Finance, when we were students, there was a Gujarati type also we could compose and take a print. So there was a nice letterpress facility also. That was the first time I saw Gilson and Universe and all that in action. They had Century School book also. That's amazing. I think it was somewhere near the pottery section. Yeah, just beside the culture. I still remember the first time I was seeing all the weights of Universe and we could play around with it and take a print. That would have been such an amazing time I am sure. So there were a lot of Gujarati fonts in that way, different weights. That's amazing. Do you practice calligraphy? I do, but it is mostly to learn the anatomy. I do not do the kind of calligraphy that most calligraphers do. I am a huge fan of dealboxing and that's a dream to achieve that level of skills someday. Yesterday I reminded him that you are talking today. He wrote to me saying you have seen your work and he is very impressed with your work. That's good to hear. Since you are a fresh graduate from MSU, there are a lot of students who are much younger to you who really want to take up type design as a profession. Do you have any advice for your junior batch students or people who are interested in taking up type design as a profession? How do you go about it? I think I have just started so I cannot say anything much serious. But I just say that you got to be focused. Every time you see the type phase, there would be something or the other that would nag you and you want to change it. So you have to be ready to change it every time you see the type phase. It's a serious job. It takes a lot of patience. A lot of publishers keep saying that they are badly in need of a real good body text in Gujarati which is an open type format which supports Unicode. So a lot of demand is there for Indian language scripts now. I will read out the next question. Type phase design always seems to me as a tedious and satisfying task. Can you share your process of designing a type phase? Well, I'd agree it is a tedious job and that's what I said. It takes a lot of patience because of the process. If it's mostly if it's an index script, it would take you at least four to six months. That's what I've been said by the seniors. But for right now, I haven't completed a whole project in one go. You cannot say how tedious it is. So I start from sketching as usual. I see a lot of ideas and maybe something would come up with a mixture of that. And I start sketching. I practice type cooker exercises in index scripts as well. So that helps a lot. And yeah, I think you just also you've got to show it to some type designer and you can get their feedback on it. That is very important actually. Yeah. I hope that answers the question is how do you decide the visual grammar of letter forms? How do you make sure all letter forms belong to the same visual language? Well, in the beginning, what I have observed is that in the beginning you start putting every idea that you have and a lot of like all the characters, the letter forms can have a different personality to itself. And then you've got to try to filter it out that what suits with what and after putting it into a text trial. So, you know, you start seeing what is what looks bumpy and how you can smoothen the texture out. So that I think that helps. Okay. The next question is how many forms have you designed so far, which is your favorite and why? Very tricky question. Yes, I have I just I think so far I've just completed two type projects and more of the many of them are incomplete. I think I've made six type faces that hasn't the concepts are in the middle somewhere. And I think Climax Gujarati is my favorite project because I've never seen something so cool in Gujarati script before. And I'm just fascinated with the possibility of how, you know, these things can work. So, yeah. Next question is what are your favorite forms? Well, that is the most tricky. That is the most tricky question. I mean, I cannot make up my mind to just one single typeface. But the typeface is that I would know regularly want to use our graphics. And so that is a text typeface and for something that would be for display, I think my favorite typeface would be domain sounds by Climtype. I really love the features of that typeface. What got you interested in typography? Well, what got me interested in typography is that I have been somewhat I had been somewhat practicing type before, you know, it was introduced introduced to me as a formal subject or anything. And in school, our teacher used to, you know, give us these exercises, we had to play with the letter forms, mostly like Latin only. So we had to play with these letter forms, we had to add characters to it and all. And I used to love that thing. Both of my parents have such lovely handwriting, so now they would help me out with it. And I've always had some, you know, some interesting connection with that. So yeah, that that I think that got me to like typography more. And after I think in my first year, Hitesh Malaviya Rocky, he came to the college to give a presentation on of his work. So, and I, I never knew that something like that could exist. It was so fascinating to me and I got in touch with him. And he kind of took a workshop in the college of, you know, calligraphy, basic anatomy. And I started liking it. And I had just decided that I will, you know, I'll try this genre. And if it works for me, if I like, I'll just go further. Otherwise, something new the next day. And I kind of went into it and here I am, am I right now? Okay, so we will wind up here. I will take a minute to show the concluding slides. And then I will just come back to you. So I'd like to thank the organizing team. Thank you. Special thanks to the Hasgeek team for all the help in getting this event. And this are the places where the audience can get in touch with us through our email ID, Sampark.tsi at the rate gmail.com. And I'd like to thank our speaker, Shaili, for sharing her interesting projects with us. With that, we will conclude the session. Thank you very much, Shaili. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Bye-bye.