BENGALURU: Trumpet it out, Kannada gets a new font, Bandipura, inspired by the elephant. Developed by Manjunatha R, an independent type designer and a conceptual photographer from T Narasipura in Mysuru district, the font has letters that resemble the characteristics of an elephant, with sharp edges and irregular thickness. It is an informal display typeface in "Kannada and Latin script", which is ideal for large sized headlines, banners and titles.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, the 34 year old said he began drawing Kannada letters at the age of 10. He continued to be fascinated with paintings and letter design even during his school days. He then took to digital typeface design and started his own type foundry called "Akshara Type Studio".
A keen observer, he wanted to develop a font that looked different from others, like Google-Benne, Noto Sans, Baloo Tamma and Akaya Kanadaka. He was aiming at designing a font that could be used in big size and that also supported all languages.
"Being a graphic designer, I have customised existing fonts to make logos, headlines and others. But I thought I should make my own font that looked different and big. Immediately, the elephant came to my mind. If you observe the Bandipura font, each letter has uneven, sharp curves like that of an elephant’s trunk, tusks, small eyes etc," he said.
He worked for nearly one-and-a-half years on the font and released it on Sankranti day. Manjunatha, who has a passion to create his own font library, said, "As Bandipura is in Unicode, all letters are available. It supports 125 languages, including Latin and Swahili. I have also used Halegannada (old Kannada) in some of the letters," he said.
Download new font for free
He said that sketching the font was not difficult but developing and programming was, because it was his maiden project. The font is not available on Google yet, but it is uploaded on his website, from where anyone can download it for free.
It supports all devices, and it can also be on mobile phones after installing software. He chose Bandipura as the name for the font as the Bandipur reserve forest is known for its elephants.
(To download the font for free, visit: https://aksharatypestudio.in/fonts/ bandipura)