Is it a good time to be an Indic type designer? We pick the brains of type foundry Universal Thirst

India, a land of seemingly endless diversity, is often known for its humming busyness. The variety and depth of life here – felt through its many facets, its culture and its people – is also echoed in its hundreds of spoken languages, which use different scripts. Collectively known as Indic scripts, these writing systems have flourished and evolved through centuries. The landscape of Indic scripts is complex. While across the country there has been both a rich, deep history, and an ebbing decline of hand lettering – a trade that was challenged by digitalisation in the ’90s – there has also been a concerted effort to tackle the dearth of Indic typefaces, and push these languages into the digital realm. Within the Indic type industry in India, a movement has been brewing for decades. Along with the leading foundries of the country, a legion of emerging designers have been addressing a deep disparity, and propelling Indic typefaces to new stylistic and conceptual heights. However, the notoriously complex industry is still tangled in many challenges. So, is it a good time to be an Indic type designer? To get a temperature check on the industry, we spoke to Bengaluru and Reykjavik-based foundry Universal Thirst, the minds behind some exciting, deliciously crafted Indic typefaces. “Initially, Universal Thirst began as an idea for an online journal dedicated exclusively to multi-script typography – a platform to express our mutual curiosity and interest in type design, writing systems, and languages,” says Co-founder Gunnar Vilhjálmsson, who started the foundry with Kalapi Gajjar. The two met during their studies at the University of Reading, following which their paths forked, when Vilhjálmsson joined Monotype in London, while Gajjar moved to Dalton Maag. However, in these intervening years, a conversation began between them – about the need for innovation and cultivation in Indian type design – which never fizzled out. “This realisation fueled our ambition to establish a platform for exploring typography within the diverse writing systems of the Indian subcontinent,” recalls Vilhjálmsson. When they both happened to leave their jobs at the same time, it became evident “that launching a type foundry together was the most effective way to share our ideas, both in theory and practice,” he notes, and so, the duo set up shop in 2016. Since then, the foundry has aced many projects, reflecting their expertise with both Latin and Indic type design – they collaborated with David Lane, the editor-in-chief of The Gourmand, to create Chelt, a revival of the popular Cheltenham typeface in two contrasting styles, expanding the typographic palette of the magazine; in 2020, they designed a beautifully shaky, slightly off-kilter Bangla typeface for the Dhaka Art Summit based on the event’s ‘seismic movements’ theme, created as a companion to Fraser Muggeridge’s Latin script; and in the same year, launched Ilai, a wonky, avant-garde Tamil typeface, that serves up a modern take on ’60s psychedelia.