 world calligraphy day. We have three speakers who are practicing professionals who will be sharing their experiences on the team, commercial applications of the calligraphy. After that we have a panel discussion on future of calligraphy in India. The panel includes people from our practicing professionals and people from academics. This will throw some light into how the epidemic affected all of us, what are the plus points and what is the future holding for us in terms of calligraphy, practice and learning. Typography Society of India started during the pandemic time with a small WhatsApp group of 25 to 30 students and in around one and a half years we have grown into a group of around close to 2,000 members which includes practicing professionals, students, teachers and typography enthusiasts and it has provided a platform for sharing knowledge, to exchange ideas, to upload work and take feedback from each other and the journey was very vibrant and colorful and it was lot of things we could all learn from each other. Tomorrow in many locations in India different groups of calligraphy enthusiasts will be conducting programs and different events to celebrate World Calligraphy Day and we move on to the inauguration. Famous master calligrapher Mr. Maraila Bhattadiri has gracefully accepted our invitation to inaugurate our event and Bhattadiri master he doesn't need any introduction he is one of the senior most calligraphers of our time. Based in Trivandrum in Kerala Bhattadiri has single handedly contributed to the popularization of calligraphy as an art form and as a graphic design too not only in Kerala but all over India he has conducted a very large number of workshops and exhibitions all over the world and he has traveled different parts of the world and he has motivated generations of youngsters to take up calligraphy. He has contributed to lots of publications in in in Kerala and also the film industry and there is one of the noted graphic designers and I am extremely happy to introduce Mr. Maraila Bhattadiri. He will be inaugurating our session over to you Mr. Maraila Bhattadiri. Today is world calligraphy day our day the day of the lovers of letters the day of the one whom loved to write letters calligraphy has a long history as an art form used for communication it is believed to have begun it's about 2000 BC all of us are flagbearers of in India for this art form that originated centuries ago we are the ones who have to carry it forward through constant practice and training I would urge all of you to set aside a bit of time for calligraphy ability finding George in doing calligraphy will help you move forward in this journey we can put it for it regardless of age and language the canvas for expressing your work of art is right before us let us get the inks filled in and stand your team down with this wish I would like to formally inaugurate this year's world calligraphy day events of the Typograph Society of India. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the second edition of Tulikhan 2022 organized by the typography society of India on occasion of the world calligraphy day it's an honor and a privilege to introduce to all of you the young speakers of today's events they are young they are passionate about calligraphy and they have inspired many by the path-breaking work which they have been doing join me in welcoming Nikhil Afle, Sanjana Chatlani and Rupali Thombre. Before I welcome them to share their rich experiences on the commercial applications of calligraphy please allow me to introduce them. Nikhil earned his degree in applied arts from LS Raheja School of Arts Mumbai followed by a master's degree in graphic design from the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad. Based out of Bangalore his practice primarily focuses on exploring the Devnagari script as an art form and its connections to traditional and spiritual roots. His practice explores the intersection between design and art. Nikhil has worked with almost all leading publishers from India to design book covers and title letterings besides his own work in calligraphy as an art form. The Harper Perennial book series designed by his studio has won him the prestigious blue elephant at the curious design award. His calligraphy work has also been published in several internationally renowned publications like the Jury Issues of the Letter Arts Review. This is an internationally acclaimed calligraphy magazine from the USA and also issue seven and eight of the very popular typism publication. Nikhil has exhibited widely both locally and internationally and many of his works are held in private collections. He was also invited to participate in the World Calligraphy Biennale of Jiola Book Doh South Korea and Quindao China. In today's talk, Nikhil Afle would share how through his work he has married his passion for calligraphy and graphic design training. Our second speaker is Sanjana Chatlani. Perhaps you all know her better as the woman behind the Bombay lettering company. For Sanjana, what started as a creative outlet during her nine to five corporate job has now successfully become a thriving business around the world of calligraphy and creative arts. The work she does across different styles and scripts, primarily western calligraphy. Sanjana's work spreads across projects for corporates, brands, special events like weddings and several others. She recently also launched a comprehensive online course on copper plate calligraphy and also has an e-commerce store with a huge range of gift in products and calligraphy supplies, which is growing very, very rapidly. In her talk today, Sanjana will discuss her current business model and everything it takes to start and build a creative business along with almost creating a new category within the world of personalization and gifting. Welcome Sanjana. Our third speaker today is Ms. Rupali Omre, an engineer by qualification and profession, but a calligrapher at heart. She started her career as an oil engineer and is currently working as a UI UX designer and UI developer as a QA specialist in the oil industry sector. He trained under the best, Achyut Palavji and Paul Antonio, and she believes that calligraphy is a kind of meditation which allows her to express herself and spread the beauty and joy of letter forms. She got fascinated with the beauty of Indian scripts, primarily the six Indian classical languages Sanskrit, Odia, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. And her work on these six languages was showcased at the Jahangirath Gallery in 2020 as an Indian multilingual calligraphy theme called Basha Bhashabharti. She is also a writer, a poet and an avid blogger, and she writes equally comfortably in both English and Marathi, which is her mother tongue. Rupali is also one of the few practitioners of Modi script in the country today. In today's talk, she is going to share the various commercial applications of telegraphy and the immense potential it has through her own work and some of the work done by other eminent calligraphers. I am glad that all three of them had accepted our invitation and I'm equally excited to have them today on the occasion of Sulekhan. So without much ado, let's move on and listen to their inspiring journeys. Welcome Nikhil, welcome Sanjana and welcome Rupali. Thank you so much. Hi, my name is Nikhil Afli. I was born and brought up in Mumbai and I studied Applied Arts from Raiderskala Park, where I was first introduced to the world of calligraphy. Later I did post-graduation from National Institute of Design in Angabad, specializing in mechanical design. So today's presentation is all about my encounters and experiments with related forms and I got an opportunity to apply them in some interesting context and in some commercial and non-commercial applications. So let me just share the presentation with you guys. I started calligraphy journey seriously when I moved to Delhi for a job in a design studio and there I had a plenty of time on the weekends or maybe the office hours and I started doodling and sketching out something on the paper and subconsciously or automatically I was drawing related forms. Mostly I was just experimenting with the letter form. There was no any agenda or any thoughts behind it. I was just having a fun with the material, the tools, whatever the papers are available with me. So all my sketchbooks and the notepads were filled with these doodles like a eye or a da-da-di-di, kakha-ga-ga, etc. And after that I actually started my blog and I started showcasing my and sharing my work on that blog and through that blog I got a lot of inquiries to do a small or jobs through the blog, from friends, word of mouth. You know the jobs like making like a name plate that some invitation or greeting cards or tattoos or some calendar assignments. So this is one I did for my colleague. So the theme was a festival of India. It's not directly the calligraphy usage but I use the calligraphy as a medium to create the illustrations and the theme was a festival of India. So each month it represents with the corresponding festival, like the time that it is. It's a great festival, February, March, February, Kerala, both days, October is in Diwali, etc., etc. And so all these my experiments and this small order of the upside compile it in one portfolio and I started sharing with design studios, agencies, publication hours. Basically I wanted to collaborate with different people so where I can offer my calligraphy service. And obviously the graphic design was a first choice because I created the graphic design and I wanted to use calligraphy as a communication tool. And so similarly in that case I sent this portfolio to the Penguin Books and the art director really liked my work and she offered me to design the first book cover, the Jimmy DeTerebs. I'll just run you through the kind of a book cover side. I'm not getting much into the details of the story and everything but I briefly discussed the process. When the editor and art director gave you the manuscript or the synopsis, you go through it in a very detailed way in a graphic design point of view. So you find out actually the target audience where exactly it is said, what is the genre? It is like a fiction, non-fiction, it's a historic, it's a scholarly literary kind of the content or it is very mass market. So everything you get to know about it then you get to know about the visual clues included in the books and you start sketching about your ideas and not necessarily I would like to mention here that whenever I get a chance to work on any book covers is not always I end up doing a calligraphy or a typography way. So there were the instances where I have created the book covers with the different approaches like a photography or an illustration based. So it brought exactly the content dictates you come up with a design solution. So this was my first book cover and we all enjoyed the process and everybody was happy with the outcome and so after that I started working with mostly all the publication houses from India like Harper Collins, Spiking Tiger, Rupa, Roly, Gloomsbury, everything. So these are the few book covers I designed for many of these publishers. The interesting part of the book covers is you get to work on different stories, different genres and that excites me a lot like you get to read the stories for the first time and it was a challenging as a designer to come up with different kinds of a lettering which actually talks about the essence and the flavor of the story because the book cover is like a movie poster and you have to tell the story in size of say A5 or like a lead format or the hardback size and you can't reveal everything on the cover and basically it should create an interest what exactly this book is all about and that is a very challenging aspect of the book cover. This is a Mark Tewley's Nonstop India, Ruti Bhasky with the step in the Sankhar village. The shaharyar that is a Urdu poet and that is the lettering in the classical style, very old style of the lighting. Then the series which I created for Kushwam same as Soma Mimbao and say it's a religion. This is a Manjushri Thapaths. All these books were set in a Nepal landscape and all the stories were revolved around that is a combination of a fiction and non-fiction. This one is a Ruskin boy, a little book of friendship and life. He curacled a few quotes based on the different subjects. Again when I got the briefs it was a very interesting discussion with the art director how we can actually go about this book cover and the publisher wanted to make it like a very collectible items like the pocket friendly diary sort of things. So instead of just writing the quotes one after the other why can't how can we actually create an interest to it. So we decided to enlarge few quotes make in a very stylized way or give a calligraphic touch to the few quotes in between the books. So it works as a filler or it breaks a monotony just like going one by one after this rule line. So there is this one the enlarged quote. So it creates an interest to it. So it's basically the graphic designer's job doesn't stay only or restricted only to the covers but they think about or think through the how the entire book is going to be and what value addition you can act to it. So this is another set of book from the same series, a little book of courage, beauty. So there are different subjects as obviously the choice of the tools, choice of the paper, the amount of the texture, the softness, hardness everything actually depends on the tone of the book and the subject. These are some few spreads. This was another interesting project added with Harper Collins India. So they come up with a set of a 10 books. These are the real regional translation into the English. There are a few languages like Kandahar Bengali and Punjabi and they wanted to come up with this series where they're talking about the regional and how the vernacular the stories are the key and highlight points of the set. So that was a brief and then instead of using any visuals from individual story, we decided to work on the script as a hero. Why can't we celebrate the indianness and the indian script or indian languages on a front cover giving them like more attention to it rather than going for the individual story and that is the kind of a look we decided for the series and this won the curious designer works really well defined for the design for works. This was the process obviously every time it starts from the paper and then and then move on to the tools basically the content and your thought process actually dictates about kind of a tool and a color palette and maybe even the texture of a paper. Then I got an opportunity to work on this a children's book written by a brilliant Kamla Basin and published by Platham Books. It's in a collaboration with the art director, Maitre Ligushi and illustrator Priyankar Gupta. So this book is talk about the modern age of Manamala where the author the Kamla Basin who is a child activist and a feminist. She wanted to introduce the beautiful thoughts about the equality gender child rise etc etc in the form of this Manamala but in a very interesting and not so preachy way and the route we decided to do with again like a hand lettering very interesting and a crazy kind of a form which children could relate to it and we added these illustrations to simplify these thoughts because some of the concepts are like really difficult even for even the adults to understand or to grasp it and so these are just to compliment whatever the text is written. It was a more like a expressive illustrative type of graffiti good example of that. Again behind the scene so there were like a piles of piles of papers I won't say wasted but with the explorations on the different kinds of writing then you have to maintain the legibility aspect also other than if it's communicating what the theme is. Then I worked on a few logos the titles so for each and every style there was some kind of a story behind those drawings of the writers. It was a movie title Khargosh then TV titles it's a performance space it's called Narada Main Sitari's The Name of the Restaurant. Nath Adwara was an exhibition of the pitch white paintings. Shyam Suvarna was another exhibition launched during the devaluation about black and gold saris so I did like the little branding like the posters and banders and a little bit of a catwalk. The Vogue magazine approached four to five typographers and lecturing artists to create a stamp based on the theme of hope during the pandemic around 2020. So initial thought was like okay I'll try to hope in a very interesting way giving the positive vibes but then I thought that's very cliche and why can't we actually write a very inspirational quote so I found this the song written by Saheb Lugandhi and there was a there was one line in that so broadly it translates like it's always darkness before the dawn or like you know this child to pass and that's what we actually needed during that time. I did this in credits for one Asia organization this was even happening in Taiwan and I was a part of it as a volunteer and a visual artist so I did this lecturing and the credits on the last year of the performance. So while working on all this I was very keen on trying the calligraphy in a different medium in a different dimension and I wanted like the calligraphy to begin why can't it be a part of our like a daily lives and so I was looking for this kind of opportunities and through my self-finished project and also from through organization I got an opportunity to fulfill that task. So one of the project I work on it like with the carpet company this is an outmaking company in Paripat. So they invited 11 artists and designers to work in their factory to create some art installations it was a kind of an artist in residency sort of a program so we stayed there for almost a one year obviously we were like a coming back form in between and so we interacted with the weavers and the craftsmen and the artisan and we used all their the printing and the weaving facilities to create this art installation or a tapestry. So the first one is about the Gini the cabbage that poem and the letters I have used is from the braiding technique which is a very important facility from that factory and the background patchwork you are saying it is with all the natural rules and this was the final outcome so all this artworks were exhibited in the art gallery in Delhi at the end of the residency. This was my second piece where I use the two letters go and draw and play with that while adding the diacritic marks the Kanam others it changes the meaning but follows in the same context. So the letters were go and draw and so through that I made Kaur, Kaur and Kari. Kaur means hand, Kaur means Shilpa Kaur, Chitra Kaur like a duo and the Kaur is white cloth of course and Kaur is like craftsmanship Shilpa Kauri, Chitra Kauri and that sort of thing and the color palette is a very white and subtle and subtle because in contrast with the actual mood and the vibe of the factory because it is very very chaotic it is super noisy there is a hustle bustle in there but I wanted to capture the relation between the craftman and his and the creation. The relation between them is a very very sitting and they are so well connected that and they are so proud of whatever they are creating it and that is why I wanted to show that piece in contrast with what is happening in surrounding the clutter. There are the few close-ups and you can see some textures. This was my third piece based on the collaboration it was actually a collaborative effort between the craftman and me. I asked them to choose their own color palette and I gave them a few options of whether or not so they approved this. So basically for them the brush is their tool, the tufting tool and for them the ink is the wool and taking that as a starting point we created both together this craftman the carpet. Here I work with the Kishmiri Namda Craftman to create the rug using the Curds Barakhari the Kaki to Taha. It is a very interesting process and outcome because so you how your sketch is getting translated into this final product or in a different medium like the textiles and during in that process sometimes it gets distorted or it's become imperfect but I like this translation because I think it adds more beauty to your letters. Then using some metals hard surfaces and apply my telegraphy there like taking the advantages of the letter forms like making it in a geometric style like a grid like structure and I created a lamp. These are all the consonants converted into the lamp. It's a different material, MDF and this is what it shows you like the dada dada again the geometric abstraction of the letter forms and how you can taking the advantage of these forms and use it as a functional aspect to it so you can keep your knickknacks and any other your accessories at home. These are close-ups. The trays these are anonymity powder coated ones and created a coasters and the tray as a set. So I'm concluding this my presentation with my favorite topic is art. The calligraphy can also be applied it in the art and especially the devanagra script which I feel is unexploded in the art form and it has a tremendous potential to be on a global platform. So everybody's aware of you know the Persian script or Arabic script and Japanese and Chinese but the Indian scripts or devanagra script they are not so very well recognized as an art form. So my practice now I'm primarily focusing on the contemporizing the devanagra script and so these are my some sketches and the final artworks. I love this space of creating the artwork because there is no beef, there is no agenda or there is no client pressure and this is my own self-exploration and another thing is actually it helps me for my other projects you know it's kind of for creating a visual library and so through these experiments I get to know okay these are the possibilities these letters are our fate so maybe I can use it in some my other projects provided it should suit the subject. This is the artwork I created from an event in Japan for earthquake really fine, the sit and rise and shine. This was a series I created like a sacred stroke using all our Sanskrit shlokas and verses and depicting in a very contemporary manner. So it's targeted more mainly to the young audience who won't be hesitant to you know put this religious kind of mantras on the wall at home. This is the letter series on Varanamala. Basically I am correlating the devanagra letter forms with the human kinds you know when you look at the Varanamala of the devanagra there are many letters are from different sizes sort of ways a few of them are like a very elegant one they are very harsh in terms of you can feel and also with the sound and being having such differences they are still living harmoniously in that Varanamala and it created a beautiful language. So why can't we learn something from them and so this is my attempt to relate to this constitution and the grammar of this letter forms with human beings these are the few artworks now. So that's it. I hope you like this presentation. Thank you Enta Sulekhan team for inviting me and allowing me to share my work. Thanks once again Tarun Shikumar sir and Achyut Palur sir happy calligraphy day all of you. There's a beautiful quote by Rumi that says let the beauty of what you love be what you do and I feel absolutely grateful that I have found something that gives me so much joy and I'm able to do what I love every single day. Namaste my name is Sanjna Chatlani I'm a calligraphy artist from Mumbai and the founder of the Bombay lettering company I'm absolutely honored to be with you here today to celebrate World Calligraphy Day and to talk about the commercial application of this beautiful art form. Now of course as Kaling refers the very first question I got and I'm sure many of you might be getting is how do you make a business around it or how do you earn money by doing this it's beautiful but is it commercially viable and that was one of my biggest roadblocks in the beginning when I began to do calligraphy professionally was education was to educate the audience and educate our people of the art form and what we can do for them. I want to talk to you today about my journey of passion to profession and how I was able to build a business around an art form that I just happened to fall in love with. I do want to take you through my journey of going into that but more importantly I also want to take you through visually all the different applications of calligraphy today that I use in my business. So the first part which is a little bit about my journey and my story and how I got into calligraphy. I was working full-time with a French wines and spirits company called Moai Tennessee. I was doing marketing and brand management and absolutely loved being in the corporate world. I had a little inclination towards art and I had a creative bug in me but I never knew I could actually professionally do anything with an art form. One day I was sitting in my office and an elderly man came into our conference room and began to write names of celebrities on these little tags that we were sending out with different gifts. I was blown away and that was the first time I saw the commercial application of calligraphy because we've all taken a calligraphy class in school or a workshop when we were younger and we've been able to create a beautiful piece but we've never known what to do beyond that right and here I saw this man writing on these cards and getting paid to do it. I was blown away and that was when I started to dabble into that world I would say a little bit. I was fascinated by a style called pointed pen calligraphy which there wasn't much of in India back in 2017. So all the artists I started to follow on Instagram or from the US or from Europe. I happened to be going on a family trip to California and attended a workshop there and I learned a style called copper plate calligraphy which is now one of my signature styles that I do and I fell in love with the world of pointed pen calligraphy. I came back to Bombay and I knew I wanted to do something with it but of course I had my full-time job and it was very much something I loved so calligraphy became a passion project or a creative outlet for me. I started doing a lot of different pieces just creating stuff for friends for family and I made an Instagram account and I started to post pictures of it. I began to get friends asked me if I'd create meme tags for them or address envelopes and I was nervous at first and I said no no no I don't think I can do this but it was only because I kept putting up pictures that people would come back to me and ask me if I could do something for them. I remember very clearly it was Diwali and a very good friend asked me if I would do 150 Diwali cards for him but if I would charge him I had no idea how to price my work but I said okay you know what I'm going to take this on it had been a year since I was practicing and I was really really enjoying it but that was the first time I realized the big difference between doing something for yourself for fun and doing something for a client where you were earning but you had to follow rules you had a brief you had a timeline to work within and you couldn't go wrong that much. So the first thing for me was understanding that there was a mental shift between doing something for fun and between and doing it for professionally and that's huge because you need to ask yourself and you need to understand if you even enjoy doing it professionally but the very first step I would say is to really practice and get very very good at that skill before you can even think of taking it on commercially right and then start doing work slowly and test the waters and see if you even enjoy it and see what the response is and get honest feedback from friends and family around me. I happened to love it and I enjoyed doing that project commercially for a client and that was a snowball effect that began for me and I started getting more and more orders from people I didn't know. I soon realized that I need to make a website and I need to be a little more professional because before I even knew it this art form that I was just doing for fun began to become a side hustle for me and people started becoming and asking me to do a lot of work for them. Yes it was scary at first but I took on the challenge and I said no no no I want to make sure I can do this and let's see you know let's try it out. So I created my Instagram account I created my website I had my domain name I had my business cards I made a deck right so I had to start making some pictures of work to show people but even then it was very hard to explain to people what it is I was doing. It happened very organically where I had people reaching out to me for certain things but if there was something I wanted to do I would actually create a dummy of it and just put it out like I remember for example nobody had ever heard of wedding signages in India done by a calligrapher and I had seen it in the US so I said you know what I'm going to just make a fake signage for a wedding and I'm going to shoot it and I'm going to put it up on my Instagram account I did that I made the entire signage I got flowers I got a photographer to help me shoot it and with that one photograph I got so many orders for wedding signages that today is one of our best sellers but sometimes you need to visually show people what you want to do for them to understand it and then come back to you to place an order so I was doing all of this building my Instagram networking meeting people talking about what I do because you can be a great artist but if you're not able to market yourself and put yourself out there nobody is going to know you exist and nobody's going to know that you can do something beautiful for them and I know as artists we're very shy to do that I know that we find it very difficult to put ourselves out there but trust me it's really important to do that you need to get out there you need to network with people you need to be confident of what it is you have as a service and what you can provide people and the customers will come and you can start very simple you can start with just ink on paper work that you're doing but you need to show them how they can use it you need to show them the commercial application of it you cannot just write names and put pictures of that because people will find it beautiful but they won't know how to come and approach you to do something for them right so for me it was a very organic journey where I reached a point where my calligraphy business was doing better and I was earning more money than my full-time job so it was a natural switch where I then at the end of 2018 quit my job to go full-time with calligraphy and today we have a studio in Bombay where we take on all sorts of work for individuals for corporates for events for brands we teach we have a store and I want to take you through all of this visually and now I'm going to show you the commercial application of everything that I do as a calligrapher I do want you to know that there is a very big difference between being an excellent artist and an entrepreneur you may be an amazing calligrapher but you may not necessarily be an amazing business owner of a calligraphy brand but we teach ourselves that and we learn that and we're able to do so by getting the right resources the right health the right material to be able to become good business owners of that particular art form right and it's something you'd learn and learn and learn along the journey all right so because visual representation is always the best way I'm going to take you through the different things we do at the Bombay lettering company to give you an idea of all the different things one can do as a commercial calligrapher as you know this is my favorite quote that I hope to start every presentation with and now we'll just dive into the commercial applications so the first thing is client commissions now this is very very vast we have work for individuals we have work for corporates and brands and then we have collaborations which again as I was mentioning is a great way to work now when I talk about individuals this could be you your mom your aunt your friend your cousin anyone coming to a calligrapher for some sort of a gift or requirement as you see if I start with my images from the top left you see these are just handwritten gift tags that were added onto a gift for someone the next image was me engraving on a bottle of champagne and two glasses that someone wanted to gift someone now I have a tool which is like a dentist drill and it has a high speed motor and we can actually etch into glass so that's how I created that the next image is an image of a handwritten letter that I've done on handmade paper for a client the image on the right is a poem sunflower that someone wanted me to get done and framed for them and gifted we then come down at the bottom center to personal stationery this is an order given to me by a client who wanted to make sets of stationery for herself and of course this process requires me to create the artwork but need to also work with my printer who then prints the card so basically you will have requirements that are just ink on paper which you can be doing or if you choose to you can take on projects that are a step further where you have to work with vendors to get the item complete which could be printers could be laser cutters it could be engravers and it's totally up to you in terms of how far you really want to go today with our small business we have printers we have laser cutters we have different vendors we work with for different projects so my printer for example has printed the stationery the next one if you see on the left of that are menus that we did for a sit-down dinner now I have handwritten combined with text printed handwritten the tags as well tied them up together with ribbon and given the ready pieces to the client and then the extreme bottom left is an entirely laser cut piece that we created for a client who wanted her baby's details created in a very very creative way so I've hand lettered the entire thing but then laser cut and painted each part of the clouds and the sun and the rays and fix them onto a base so that's lots more than just calligraphy right but that's an entire product you are giving someone and that is what people want they want the entire product and there's lots more this is something we do for corporates and brands now one of the most popular things brands reach out to us for our handwritten letters envelope addressing gift tags as you see and again you can choose different styles you can do this in for them usually if it's a corporate or a brand they have very strict rules they'll give you the color of ink they need they'll give you their stationery as well sometimes we print the stationery ourselves and we have the liberty to choose our color of ink or style but a lot of times you have the brand giving you strict guidelines to follow right another big thing that I do for individuals as well as corporates or brands is murals which is where you actually paint on walls now this is a lot of fun because you can create your artwork of course small but then you use a projector to blow it up projected onto the wall and paint now again murals and sign painting is a whole other world and universe commercially but as a calligrapher I like dabbling into it every now and then brand collaborations now if you're a calligrapher and you want to start going commercial with your work a great way is to collaborate with the brand now this is about reaching out to like minded brands who are not direct competition for you and do something together where your audiences are similar or your audiences are even the same so these are few of our most recent collaborations that we've done this was the google indias calendar where they collaborated with 12 women artists from across the country and asked each one of us to create an artwork for the calendar the next one is a brand called tombo which is a japanese stationery brand and we designed the packaging for their india brush pens as you can see so all the calligraphy that you see on the packaging is done by me and we worked on it together to create that and on the right which is food hall which is a chain of luxury supermarkets across the country food all reached out to me to create beautiful greeting cards that would be readily available at their stores for people to pick up and buy so combining your work your calligraphy with other forms of design aspects is important and then working with like minded brands to collaborate on something bigger is also something we do a lot the next bucket i can talk about is wedding calligraphy now this is a great way of commercially working as a calligrapher because weddings people love going with personalization they love spending on that extra touch and there's a lot you can do for wedding calligraphy i like to divide this into pre-wedding and days off pre-wedding is everything from your save the dates to your wedding invitations now again as a calligrapher you may choose to only give the calligraphy units to say the designer who's making the cards or if you've reached a point where you want to take on the entire project like we do we print and pack design the entire invitation and then you have stuff for the days of the wedding which could be your signages it could be welcome letters it could be gift acts place cards thank you notes anything and everything that is communication and that is words and that is personalization can be executed for weddings i'll take you through just a few of them so invitations are stuff we work on i work with and collaborate with illustrators as well because there are times that i would put in my calligraphy the illustrator would bring in her designs or illustrations and then we work with a printer or different vendors who actually bring this entire thing out to life and then we pack and also send it out so i love working on wedding invitations as you can see in some of these have used copper braid calligraphy the envelope is handwritten in the leftmost picture in the center picture we have both foiled the calligraphy units as you can see and on the right hand side picture i've actually done some devnagari which was used at the butter paper wrap as well as if you see the slopes that were written on the back of one of the inserts so you have a lot of options to play with wedding calligraphy if you choose to get into the designing of the invitations also now an example of signages and this is what i was talking about these are for the days off the wedding so you can have the couple's name the name of the function and do them in innovative ways you can work on wood glass mirror the best part about working as a commercial calligrapher is that i am not restricted to ink on people i can work on all sorts of surfaces and it's a lot of fun of course the other things like we spoke about which are welcome notes and you know hamper tags are things you've seen in the pictures above but there's all of that and more that you can offer for weddings the next thing i'd like to talk about that i do a lot as a commercial calligrapher something known as on-site calligraphy now this is where i go live and actually do calligraphy with the brand or a store or even an event or a wedding and this is really nice because it shows that the the brand is trying to create an experience for their customer and you want to make it as interactive and jewelry would go into next to that is jome alone which is a lovely brand from the uk they do fragrances and candles and again i was personalizing their boxes during diwali and christmas so anyone coming in to buy a gift would have me personalize their box for them with their message and the third one you that you see is nika and with nika i work with them across the year during different occasions and i do on-site engraving for them so if you see these are perfume bottles that people have bought and then i have engraved on the perfume bottles and what makes this really fun is that people can actually interact with you and see the process of what you're doing as an artist and it's amazing right as artists we'd love to show people what we're doing and take them through it and people are always very very intrigued by it i then come to education now for me education has become a really big part of what we do and i love teaching point and pen calligraphy of course as you see over here we have in person classes and post pandemic we move to live online classes and for me education has just been something i have fallen in love with and it's also a very very strong commercial part of what we do today right so for online i use something known as a document camera and i project what i'm writing onto the screen on zoom and this has worked really really well but as a business owner today who wants to see ways in which she can scale up her business we have very consciously worked on something over the last six months which is a pre-recorded online course so everything i used to teach life on the style called copper plate calligraphy we now teach this as a pre-recorded course so i shot for five days straight we did a studio shoot and pre-recorded everything in detail we now have an online course where people buy the course sign up get their modules they get to watch everything at their own time at their own pace whether on their desktop or on the app and they have a community that they can be a part of so the reason i'm showing this to you is because this is a form of recurring revenue that i've created and this is a great commercial application if you are an educator in whatever art form it may be creating pre-recorded online courses and the last bucket for us is our e-commerce which is our online store so for me early on as a calligrapher i realized that i was not finding the right tools and supplies that i wanted in india so i had to import them every time so in 2018 i decided that i'm going to create my online store and at that time it was the first in the country a dedicated online store for calligraphy supplies and i tried to find the best supplies from all over the world and keep them available for our community in india so whether it's ink from pox and quill or higgins or accessories like you know your holders your dinky dips or as you see rub and buff which is very engraving we want to try and have a store that is created for artists by artists i'm not trying to become a massive art store in the country that's not my objective over here but the objective with the store is that calligraphers from across india can get great quality supplies from us and then our last part is the gifts and product section on our website now this started with people coming to me saying what do you have ready for me to gift someone and what's really important is you should listen to your customers you should listen to what people are asking you for and we kept hearing people ask us what can we give to a loved one so we said you know what we're going to build an online store with gifts and products where people can come and buy either ready-made generic items as you see like the guy's mantra over there or the diwali tags or we can have personalized items like name plates for homes engraved champagne flutes personal stationery but these are products that people can go on our store put in their requirements and order online so the online store also serves as a form of passive income for us as business owners now there are so many more things one can do but i hope that my little explanation with a lot of pictures of where we are using commercially using calligraphy commercially can give you ideas and help you find ways in which you can use your calligraphy commercially because the sky is your limit there is so much you can do and i want you to realize that you're not restricted to ink on paper but you need to show people it's very important that you show people how they can use how you can use your calligraphy commercially and how they can use your services because if you are putting up pictures online of just beautiful poems and beautiful words written but with no commercial sense of it people won't understand how they can use your services so you need to almost spoon feed them in a way to show them that this is what i can do for you and i think that's what's really worked wonders for us so i want to thank you for being with me today i hope this was helpful and i hope um you've been inspired to get some ideas to use your calligraphy commercially we have a blog on bombaylattring.com and we also have some lives on the business of calligraphy on our instagram if you'd like to check them out because they have a lot of information around the same topic as well thank you very hi everyone i feel very nice to see all of you over here thank you for that today first of all i would like to thank professor shikumar and typography society of india for giving me this opportunity to present myself on this platform today i'm going to talk about my journey in calligraphy and also my viewpoints about commercial applications of calligraphy why doing this i'm going to present my calligraphy work i have done so far along with that i would like to present some of the great calligraphy work i have already done by so by great calligraphers like professor arkezoshi and master calligrapher arkezoshi who have worked in this field over many years and already had created so many commercial brands in this field they are inspirations for thousands of people so let's start i'm rupari kundey i'm from mumbai i'm working as an oiz designer my calligraphy journey started in 2015 at the palo school of calligraphy after doing basic calligraphy in uh leonagri and low roman i started exploring in the same field i also learned copper plate and gothic but i love calligraphy most when i started working and learning oria calligraphy i just love the form of oria characters and then the curiosity about indian scripts hit the list and in that time i started exploring other scripts as well and all the works work i have done in that time in different scripts that i presented in the form of an exhibition bahasa party at jahangir art gallery in 2020 in calligraphy we are talking about calligraphy the first thing first expression comes to my mind is calligraphy is meditation if i'm saying this from my self experience now if you see there are so many people from different backgrounds people from medical or from banking industry they want to learn calligraphy as calligraphy is a good space poster it also teaches us valuable things which we follow in our day-to-day life like patience control balance concentration calligraphy is art of beautiful handwriting the top calligraphy is derived from two greek letters calligraphy which means beautiful writing by studying calligraphy i came across the word calligraphy i started exploring that at will and the main difference which came which i came across is why do you calligraphy legibility is of time borders but in calligraphy the most important part is the expressions how you express the letters than legibility it is the art of expressions something beyond imaginations can be created with the help of calligraphy calligraphy is a source of inspiration reason for attraction if you see some work in calligraphy might sure you will get attracted towards it it can easily blend with other art forms for example like music and dancing the most important thing which we will be interested today to know is calligraphy is something which holds high commercial value when we say about the commercialization of this beautiful art these are few of the points which comes to my mind we will go through each of these in detail in coming slides first one is painting we all know what paintings are and we all like paintings we love to have those in at our home painting creates positive meaning painting holds significant value in everyone's life there are different forms of paintings there are new variations in surface mediums execution techniques it is a source of attraction with the help of painting we can convey the message so and called calligraphy does adds calligraphy contains words and letters with the help of that we can convey the message but like for example if i want to i want to have my favorite poem on the wall of my home i can just go and print and hand it on the wall it will not solve purpose and it will not look good at home but what if i if i write the same poem in a very beautiful calligraphy and beautiful colors textures and then hand it it will create the normal piece will become a art piece so i mean of calligraphy and painting creates a masterpiece which attracts more treatment is the key for extraordinary painting we should always keep on experimenting with the compositions colors variations art galleries there are so many national and international galleries which give such type of techniques which involve calligraphy we should keep on keep on going through such a work it will surely give us new ideas we're not saying that we should think about converting calligraphy into painting that the main question will be how we can do that so this one letter one design this is one of the techniques i used while i was exploring so as i say when our indian scripts every script has unique form every later in the script has beautiful form it itself is a good design it has a very good quality of positive digital space so while working it comes to my mind that if i can convert that design into painting so i just played with some design techniques some painting techniques and these are the outputs now composition of random letters when i'm saying that one letter can be a design even composition of two or three letters you can also commercialize it in the way that like for example once one of my friend comes to me and she was like i want my initial and my fiancée's initials should come together in one frame so such things can get commercialized while doing that but more thing we should we should think about is when they're converting calligraphy in the painting that time we should have some freedom to change not the complete originality of the alphabet but some stroke we can give a different form like for example in the first painting it is created with 10 two letters who knows 10 two they must be knowing that most of their tell two characters have a small stroke at the top of every letter i have just given a form of leaf structure to that stroke and it just changed my painting also we can express our thoughts if you want to give some message you can convey that to painting calligraphy painting now in the middle painting i just want to wanted to give showcase that it is a blending of tell two and kanara so tell two and kanara are the children from the same other language that is kadamba which is derived from brahmini and how the amalgamation or the blending took place and while doing that we should also think where we can use that like we can print it on any other surface and that can get a good commercialized product this is another technique which i can approach here if you see i have become a complete Vishnu Sahajranam in the form of Shankha and while doing this even i i have a very good positive feeling i enjoyed i feel very powerful when i was doing this and also i got a very good response people got connected to it emotionally as well as in the spiritual way they got connected i also created one more painting in this way which has curriculum curriculum written in the Tamil script this is another another similar painting where thousands of Ganesha names are written in the modi script the person who owns this painting now he says that i would understand um i would understand modi but the feeling that there are thousands names in this painting and it is in my house the feeling itself gives a power some positive energy is there in the house and this is what are the experiments we should do to get commercialized more basic forms and colors here if you see the backgrounds they are really they are created with the very soft colors i have taken the key in my mind and then just overlapping all the alphabets from the same script and it created a very smooth design and over that i have used different forms it is just for the showcasing that every script is having unique basic forms which are getting repeated in most of their alphabets now if we see over at the podium script it is having a very beautiful top curve over most of the characters and it gives it's a very beautiful ornamental value so when we are creating this we should think in the product ways as well like where i can use this painting where it will look beautiful when it will get straight and in this way we will get good ideas gifting attesities i always think that calligraphy makes someone feel special like just imagine if you are having your friends birthday and you want to give someone something there is no meaning that you are just dating it from shop and giving it to him that instead of that what if you create something you had to write it you write it with the help of calligraphy or some new some good colors new techniques or you add some good statistical values and then the person will feel very special the few years ago like 10 to 20 years ago there was a trade that people used to exchange getting cards on every occasion on birthdays anniversaries festivals and we at we keep all those as the memories but in this digital era somewhere this trend is gone but we the talent efforts can bring it back it's very good for spreading awareness about calligraphy as well these are few of the how we can think about it we should apply calligraphy in the things which are around us it is a human tendency that first whenever something new comes in market people will not just go and go directly and buy it for the first time first of all they will see they will observe what exactly it is they will start exploring they will try to use that and then they will go and buy to increase awareness we can commercialize calligraphy designs on daily used items such as umbrellas plates t-shirts and many more it just like someone needs to start and then it becomes a trend so always be experimental these are few of the examples of daily items we can talk calligraphy on glass items we can have beautiful messages or just stroke designs on umbrellas or the accessories like tops bowels posters we can also create name plates many many people already doing business of name plate and and calligraphy plays a very good role in that who covers and characters and posters many great calligraphers typographers rapid designers are already working in this industry as I told calligraphy attracts people and what these products require the attraction from users so calligraphy has a very vital importance in this field calligraphy for interior decoration calligraphy many people are using nowadays calligraphy as an interior element like in the third image it is shown that how we can use calligraphy to decorate our house or any office area the second image is from one of the school in Mumbai where they have picked up few of the few poems from the syllabus and they showcase that they printed that in on the walls of classrooms and those classrooms are looking very fresh and very beautiful and also from the children point of view you all know that whatever children see they observe they will learn that so it is very much beneficial education by that will so this is a very good idea and this is some some trend which which should be followed calligraphy on puppet art and cookies this I started I tried doing this as I was in love with oria calligraphy so I started composing the letters in such a way that it will create some design I tried it on the surfaces of dupe tiles and saris and I got a very good response these are some of the calligraphy works created on the saris I'll make you can imagine that how how and where calligraphy can be worked calligraphy on t-shirt this trend is is there from many years people love good methods to have on their t-shirts this only I'm going I want to tell that someone must have had this idea in few years back and they started this so that's why we are following that and you are we are using in in present so in the same way we should think and we should I think how in how more creative ways we can use calligraphy calligraphy in duality we can see hardly calligraphy is visible in duality threads but here is the result the first one is created by dr. siley she had done the work in oria calligraphy here the structure of oria oria dancer taiya here the structure of taiya is created with the help of only the orias oria letters this structure is a gallery which oria dancers want and we can see how delicate designs can be created with the help of this the another one is in the seahoney script here a single letter so it's composed in such a way that it can create a very beautiful necklace and I am sure most of the woman will like to have such piece and it is this this script is also very delicate logos and movie titles design most of the people are working and working in this industry and there are so many trains so many people are already working while creating the logo or creating the movie title there is a big story about it the designer must follow and it should be an expression it should have considered colors the branding all these things should be in the presentation it is already in the market and this is a very good example how commercialization takes place carrying a few walls and hoodies most of the people nowadays want to see good good positive messages in on the walls of their houses also in the cities the cities the walls are decorated in this way if you go to nami umay you will see that most of the the walls around the cities are decorated with paintings and sculptures one more this train is very good they're good positive thoughts or some such locusts are written and this is also showcase our culture to someone who are visiting our place hoardings or posters have already had a very important role in role in advertising demonstration at fusion work demonstration is where you are showcasing we are spreading awareness about the script about the the art in front of thousands of hundreds of people and fusion work there are so many people who are doing fusion work like like here if you see a chapala sir he plays the calligraphy with music or dancing and the complete environment is mind blowing sorts of awareness as calligraphy attracts people so whenever we want to convey some message some social message or and what we need at that time it is of more importance it is an expression as well so it is playing vital role in spreading positivity through good methods like it is very good to convey some message from one heart to thousands of people in one go the first image which you are seeing such images must have come across in the COVID time many artists spread awareness in this way the second image is from Akshar Bharat this is a very beautiful event we had in 2020 here on 15 August 15 calligraphers from different parts of 15 cities in India they walk together on the Dhanagana mana and they wrote whole Dhanagana mana in different 15 scripts and it was a very good event where we spread awareness about so many about our country about our thought and so about the work and our art calligraphy giving new trends when I say that commercialization is important commercialization to be done so we should there is need to reach the good amount of people already many people commercialize this beautiful art and many people are using it but still there is huge crowd who are unaware of this term so we should reach them so in how we can do that we should create such such trends such trends should get established once the trend get established people gets attracted towards it if our aim is to commercialize calligraphy at high level then we should think in such a way that common person should get attracted towards it as the US designer I feels that the product should be pleasing to eyes but while doing that it should be created in the user oriented manner by looking at the aesthetic values we should also maintain other elements such as quality ease user friendliness and keep on experiment with new ideas like one trend you established this trend will go comes and come and go what next so keep on experimenting the new ideas are always welcome preserve our culture and go global our scripts are our valuable stranger which we should preserve this is what all it what I come to my mind every time and this inspires me to work more in our scripts and believe me our scripts are really very decorative very beautiful they have a high aesthetic values if we work if the work is created in the right direction it will it must globalize and it will be very much popular and it will earn a good good feedback at the global level so if we the calligraphers create good and promising work then it will surely attract more people who will get aware of this beauty also one more thing I would like to say over here that now it is also good to walk in photography and explore and also spread awareness for our future generation like in my exhibition I made some people whose response was like oh this is my line my mother tongue I can speak very well I can read little bit but I can't write it but after seeing series of things they will come across and they will be like oh the script is looking really very beautiful I should learn that so this should happen our future generation also there are people who will take our culture in the future so we should take it that way and work together and also also follow the the trends and if the good work is done in the right direction then there will be surely a very best future to Indian photography so keep keep doing work exploring work and keep on keep on work keep on prior harder to preserve our culture and spread photography as much as possible thank you so much hello everyone my I am Amit and I would like you to I would like to welcome you to panel discussion on Sulekha in 2022 we have some esteemed guests in our panel and I will begin with introducing each one of them firstly we have Achyut Palavji Achyut Palav the master calligrapher is considered the father of modern Indian calligraphy an alumnus of Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Arts Mumbai Achyut sir was trained by many early masters like professor Ake Joshi and German calligrapher professor Werner Schneider he established the calligraphy school his love for Indian scripts motivated him to conceptualize and execute many ventures like calligraphy roadways and callipest India's first-ever calligraphy festival through his incredibly beautiful calligraphy creation Achyut Palavji has inspired generations of youngsters to take up calligraphy as profession as a designer he has made significant landmark in history through the creative fusion of calligraphy calligraphic beauty in a commercial space of advertising and graphic design he's also the founder of Achyut Palav school of calligraphy in Navi Mumbai and established Callihan award for excellence of calligraphy both are the first of its kind in India he conducts demonstrations and lectures in various design and art institutions around the world he's also an adjunct professor at the idc school of design at bombay his works have been executed around the world he created a video on jana ganamana based on our national anthem in which the lines of the anthem were written in 15 calligraphers in 15 indian languages this unique event first of its kind in india was dedicated to the nation on 15 august 2020 next on the panel we have Raghunita Gupta Raghunita Gupta is a renowned calligrapher based in New Delhi she is the founder and chairperson of the calligraphy foundation of india and the chief organizer of akshar mahal sir an offline event which is going to be held tomorrow at deli technological university campus in deli she conducts courses workshops and exhibitions on calligraphy around the globe next in the panel we have Giral Bhavit she is a renowned calligrapher based in amdabad an alumnus of cn college of fine arts and achyut palak school of calligraphy miss herel works extensively in many indian languages notably gujarati she has conducted calligraphy workshops and exhibitions all over the world she is invited for the first virtual international conference on the silk road calligraphy by iranian national commission for unesco to present gujarati calligraphy artwork and research paper in 2020 next in the panel we have Dilwag Singh Dilwag Singh is one of the most notable calligraphers of the current generation with a huge amount of followers on instagram Dilwag has carved a very exclusive niche with his beautiful calligraphy work with a wonderful aptitude for experiments his experiments stand out as important mindstones in liberating oneself from the age-old con conventions on material tools and styles he is an alumnus of named Kangra and he is currently based in Bhopal next we have professor Tarun Dev Girthar professor Tarun is activity chairperson education and principal designer in the graphic design discipline at NID amdabad he received his master's degree in from NID in 1997 and has more than 24 years of consolidated experience in design education professional design practice and academic governance at NID he teaches important courses such as type design typography printing technology illustration visual narratives and environmental perception for both bachelor's and master's students professor Tarun has designed more than two dozen publications and a large number of symbols and logos including right to information RTI and none of the above no time for the government of India his logos for cluster University of Jammu and Srinagar have been awarded the ninth world art 2018 professor Tarun is also the co-founder of the typography society of India next we have professor GV Srikumar professor GV Srikumar is professor and former head of IT school of design IT Bombay his area of specialization include typography calligraphy publication design information graphics design pedagogy and visual scientific semantics during his master's of design program at IDC IT Bombay he was trained by a renowned typographer and calligrapher professor arcade Joshi since 2000 he was he has been a faculty member at IDC IT Bombay as well as a design consultant with many corporate houses before joining the alma mater IT Bombay he worked for several publication houses including the Times of India group Indian Express group Jassu by digital media etc he has designed some of the most renowned magazine in India including chip digit chandamama overdrive society savvy banking frontiers etc professor Srikumar is the founder of the typography society of India I welcome everyone thank you for the introduction so we'll start with the first round of questions and the first question we have is according to you what is the future of calligraphy in India and I would like to invite Raghunita mom first for how about it on verdict on the question over to you ma'am hi hello everyone I'm Raghunita and the chairperson of the calligraphy foundation calligraphy the scenario has changed a lot during the time of covid and that scenario the change was brought to a lot of budding calligraphers I'm also one of them who are very active during covid calligraphy and studied a lot from different angles with different masters after talking to different people when we talk about the future of calligraphy so today's scenarios we keep in mind when we move ahead so the first thing that comes is how we will work on the awareness of calligraphy so when we worked with the foundation when we increased the stage with the foundation so the first thing came to our mind that people first know what calligraphy is, don't ask this question directly what calligraphy what calligraphy a question comes that what calligraphy why do we calligraphy keep that thing in mind as we started moving ahead there were many things that came to our mind that we tried to change at different angles in our own way and a community built and the community built in that approximately 22 calligraphy chapters in which we made approximately 800 plus calligraphers we connected through the 800 calligraphers we connected in that we found out what problems we have in our area what problems we have to work on and how we can take it towards the future when we talk about taking it towards the future so the first the biggest field is that is academic how do we take it forward through academics always any any community when a community moves ahead people accept it as a community they accept it so the first thing that comes with us is community and through the foundation we could build this and to do it through the academy we tried to do it through the foundation we should take it forward through Akshar Motsav we got a very good response in new delhi and all over india so approximate 200 plus calligraphers are coming from all over india across india 200 people are coming for it which is a very big contribution for a new foundation which abhisheer just started and a very interesting point is that on 11th december 2021 we gave its foundation day and exact nine months we are coming up with a baby that is Akshar Motsav exact nine months so um just again we are able to see through the foundation the way we got response in this district academic system thing if all the people in their areas start working through this they will get good response and other than that our design team people are design who design field people they are completely a backbone for us so when we move forward so the knowledge of those people who are going to come with us is going to give a lot of future of calligraphy which we are able to see from this angle so this is something which foundation through we are going to represent in near future apart from this there are many multiple scripts which have not been worked on and in last one and a half year we got an opportunity to meet a lot of such calligraphers which um we get different scripts like no one knows people don't talk about it hard up script we got people who are talking about it who are working on it so um one of the founder of our foundation abhishek wardhan Singh has taken some steps and he's a student who is doing phd in arts so arts in the sense he's uh he's uh working on um uh stone art so basically he's studying all these arts for calligraphy thing how we are going to take these things ahead so we have good reason i mean for this that maybe in the coming time through the foundation we can take some such steps which in the coming time as much as we have collective efforts which are efforts which are efforts we all together create something like this that when we talk about indian calligraphy at the world level so we all together represent India and a different impact of it and in the future we will see it in different ways in different commercial markets in academics and everywhere thank you so much thank you thank you so much i think you mentioned a really great point about the academy and i will move to the next speaker uh dilwag ji and i would like to hear his views that if uh academics were a part of his calligraphy journey and the academics were raised and he started calligraphy journey over to you delab good evening to everyone and on the occasion of world caliph calligraphy day i would like to issue everyone uh happy calligraphy divorce so it's uh so uh to me calligraphy happened during uh calligraphy calligraphy which i will eat this was during the lockdown initially uh my education was designed in the background so as a fashion design as a graduate from nift so in my college time there was no formal education in calligraphy so communication students not calligraphy i don't even know the term calligraphy before uh 2014 so in two and a half years understanding basic understanding of calligraphy so and i would appreciate and even uh gv sir and uh hill ma'am achyut sir and tarun sir to start this uh typography society of india where i met so many people who are practicing calligraphy and typography at very uh great level so module introduced i guess two three years back two years back so and treat thank you thank you so much uh next i would uh ask hill ma'am to share her views um i um i would like her to also speak about how the experience was for the virtual conference of the city court calligraphy by iranian nursing commission i am sure she might have met a lot of people across the world and how they are seeing the future of calligraphy if she like you could like share some light on that yeah hello everyone um yeah that uh experience was wonderful and since they have targeted iranian and silk road countries so there were more arabic and urdu calligrapher very few i think very few indian calligrapher as well as latin roman calligrapher was there and when i see their work sometimes i miss key we can also do wonderful creation with calligraphy and especially i'm always amazed to see arabic calligrapher and chinese calligrapher because i think they they don't write they create image and in that only i'm seeing future of calligraphy now everyone knows about what is calligraphy and see what was the basic earlier the role of calligraphy is to write to give any message now because of digital media and because of graphic design and typography that part has taken so now they don't require calligrapher to write any message now types are available online so now it should go into visual art so it's not always readable and legible it should be image it should be illegible it can feel rather than read there should be tension between reading and seeing when one viewer come to see your calligraphy it should disturb them your letter form should disturb there should be difference between typography and calligraphy what typographer are writing that same way you are writing and giving message then there is no difference you need to break that difference i am reading right now one german calligrapher's book and i'm very much amazed from one american calligrapher called thomas engmeyer and the book i'm reading is a calligraphic line whose name is hence george m budget so what i'll just jot down some points from his book he says calligraphy can exist as something that is felt rather than something that is to be read he says invent in new forms means what you are writing suppose if you are writing curve so everyone knows what is curve what is curve but you need to create some different form of curve give some image try to use drawing principles in your calligraphy it's not necessary that you always write with your calligraphy pen you can write with oil paint brush also then you can create new form new new language altogether then he says calligraphy mean to be seen not read this is the future of calligraphy calligraphy should disturb the viewers and calligraphy cast a spell on the viewers by its forms take them further away from the text that is the future of calligraphy we are not inviting people to read as a calligrapher that i am firmly believer and i'm working on this when you write you should see the spirit the soul the touch of the calligraphy not the pure letter form it should be legible not legible because legible part typographers are doing very well why we need to repeat this no no so better you create image create expression and more with the regional script not Latin always your own regional your own mother tongue that is my viewpoint thank you thank you so much ma'am it's a very very interesting point next i would move to taroon sir and i am pretty sure throughout his career he has came across a lot of calligrapher who essentially was his students and i would like to know how the like how it has changed throughout this entire time over to you sir yeah thank you so much amit and very very good evening to all of you viewers who are you know who have joined us today on the occasion of the international calligraphy day uh i feel honored and privileged to be sharing the i can't say the dais but sharing the screen with all these illustrious i won't call them practitioner of calligraphers but i would call them these illustrious people who are at heart lovers of letter forms you know that love for letter form is the single most guiding thing which is you know sort of compelling their soul to do whatever they are doing so i i have got the good fortune of you know knowing interacting reading understanding uh from many such people uh some of them we lost to covid also god bless their soul who who shared a common form of common love for letter forms in in whichever form it was whether it was ink on paper whether it was pixels on the screen or whether it was ink on metal and metal on paper kind of a thing but i just wanted to quickly you know take all of you guys through my own personal understanding of uh what is going to be the future of calligraphy and uh why are we discussing what the future of calligraphy should be because i think all of us agree that the future of calligraphy is very very bright and more number of people are going to start practicing calligraphy in the next two three four five years as compared to the number of people who've been practicing calligraphy 10 years earlier right but before we talk about the future uh let me just take you through a quick recap because it's important to understand the past uh what happened you know and as uh uh Hiral had also pointed out that calligraphy as we know today started off as a very very important skill in those selected few people who were also known as scribes who would write all these official documents right and then of course because of religious practices and all they used to make copies of manuscripts and in different parts of the world these scribes used to write in their own style and that evolved into different kind of styles as we know today whether it is round hand whether it is unshield whether it is italics or whatever it is and then of course uh the technology economics uh all these wars i'm talking about the 12th 13th 14th 15th century all these advancements the the kind of political things which were changing across the world not only in india but also in europe uh we had what is known as the metal type so creating artifacts on paper which have letter forms on paper uh new processes that was the modern technology of that time right because it became so much more easier to make copies of a particular manuscript or a book and then i will not i'll just skip to the as is trending you know i'll skip to the good part of the digital era the computer started coming in and the computer started becoming powerful at one level and smaller at another level so our mobiles are also some kind of computers right we are processing it we are consuming a lot of information so if we look at the last 10 to 12 years a lot of communication material which had text let's focus on the text because we are talking about telegraphy and the words and the letter forms because of the digital technology and the way it democratized the creation of any printed page everybody who had computer or a basic software was creating layouts and was trying to create communication uh using letter forms that the things around us started to become very homogeneous they all started appearing to be the same thing they all started looking similar to each other yeah and that is where the communication which was created started to lose its own individuality started to lose its own individual visual character and as very rightly you know pointed out by Raghun Mithaji Dilbagh and Hiral also that covid what happened during the covid you know it is very very important for all of us to realize that we were doing our work on the computer we were attending school on the computer we were uh communicating with our family members also on the screen our source of entertainment was also on the screen that world over people started looking at what are the kind of things which we can do without the computer and that really witnessed a strong revival of calligraphy calligraphy wasn't there around us it was but in the schools it wasn't encouraged you know all schools many schools many students have to prepare their projects project works and submit right uh how many of them hand hand hand draw or you know do the lettering by hand on the covers no they all take a computer print out and from a teacher's perspective everybody's cover started to look the same but one child who has done something you know hand lettering so then it stands out so continuing with that I think what the last three years have done is brought together all the like-minded people technology played a very very important role in in bringing all of us like-minded people together people who share a common love for letter forms not all of them are practitioners some of them are motivators some of them are supporters in terms of you know more and more people have started looking at what kind of tools what kind of workshops and things like that uh so I personally feel that the future of calligraphy is going to be very very bright because everybody whether we look at it from an individual or get it from a corporate's perspective people want to stand out and there is going to be a very very conscious visual design decision to not to use a computer computer typeface for exclusive things for special things right I mean look at some of these top bakeries know they have classes for their salesman okay if somebody wants to buy a cake and request you to write happy birthday you better know how how your letter forms should be right so people are taking what is it it is an extension of calligraphy right people are expecting a exclusive experience wherever they go right and that exclusivity will come only when we are looking at something which is created by hand and not by machine there is another conversation about this that how artificial intelligence can you know take over what we know as calligraphy today but that is a conversation for another time maybe two years down the line you know um yeah thank you everyone wants personal touch thank you thank you as well like jay quiteman once said it's this decade has been a era called the renaissance of calligraphy and some of the points like you said yeah it's absolutely yes I will move to achyut sir and like Tarun sir once pointed some of the commercial experience commercial application of calligraphy and who better to ask achyut sir about it and I would like to know his perspective of how time so I would like to thank all the panel members and also all the viewers but I'm sorry for the introduction I think Dilbagh has asked am I on am I audible yes yes yes so I think this is also for the viewers Amit Dilbagh has asked a very very important question we saw three young practitioners of calligrapher you know who have made calligraphy as a very central core aspect of their professional practice um now this is an open call for the viewers Dilbagh's question was imagine your grandparents are asking you or imagine that nosy gooha or that auntie is so do send us your responses the email is id is going to be flashed after this session or you can also get in touch with us on our instagram we would like to know your views on what do you feel even for a moment one feels good about it right it gives you a good vibe it gives you a good feeling right do connect with us do let us know yeah thank you so much yes amit thank you sir thank you so much thank you everyone thank you to the viewers who are watching us and I hope all the thoughts and all the ideas here discussed reach to a lot of people and get benefited in the realm of calligraphy thank you and the typography society of india on behalf of the typography society of india and the organizing committee and on behalf of for the tyron and dr uday umar and chiran i would like to convey our gratitude to all of you for joining us in this other discussion thank you very much thank you so much thank you everyone good evening I hope you enjoyed the program and learned a lot from the panel discussion and the presentations on behalf of the typography society of india and the organizing team of sulakin 2022 I'd like to thank everyone who helped us get this online event together we are grateful for the excellent support and advice we received from the two great masters of indian calligraphy mr achyut palav and mr narayanapattati we're also indebted to our esteemed speakers nikhil afle sanjana chatlani rupali thomre rakunitha gupta hieral paghut and dilbagh singh a big thank you to our technology partner has geek and the entire team at has geek dot com we express our gratitude to our organizing partners idc school of design iat bombay the national institute of design amdabad and the kachetata power foundation trivandrum due to time constraints we were unable to stream the entire video of the panel discussion uh don't worry the full video will be available on our youtube channel so please go and check it out and i request all our audience to send their valuable feedback by email to some perk dot tsi at gmail.com s a m p a r k dot tsi at gmail.com so thank you all for your presence your support and your participation our next online program will be held on the 27th of august at 5 p.m