Sadak Chhaap is an effort towards documenting the dying craft of hand-painted typography of the Gujarati script found in the streets of Ahmedabad.
About the Project
Type is something we encounter every day. It has become such an integral part of our visual culture, or rather our lives, that the art and craft of it often go unnoticed. In the streets, type guides us through the maze of roads and lanes, helps us catch the right bus, warns us that a ferocious canine is at watch behind the gate, takes us to the right place when we are in sudden need of medicine, or gets us connected to the right person when we need to get a signboard painted. The craft of making type beautiful and functional is known as typography.
Nowadays, we all have tools to create typography. Computers have revolutionised typography with numerous fonts and digital tools at our fingertips. But some years ago, it was not as easy. Although printing had existed for centuries, the high cost of it meant that letters had to be painted by hand in order to make one or two large-sized pieces of typography. That was until cheaper digital technologies like Flex were introduced. Now one could see a preview of the design on a computer screen before it was printed. And it was cheaper, and faster.
Hand-painted type has become a dying art. It is an unsustainable business. Painters do not want their children to get into this business. Those who have been doing this since before digital technology arrived are the only ones still in this business. While I do not propose preserving this craft in the mainstream, I do think documenting it is important. This work can serve as:
1. A source of knowledge for the general public that is not specifically concerned about hand-painted typography or typography in general, and
2. A rich resource for researchers, artists and designers working with Gujarati script, typography, type design, calligraphy, or other related things.Since the development of typography and printing technologies majorly happened in the West, documentation of typography has been done mostly for Latin script. When it comes to India, the Devanagari script has got the most attention. There is little documentation or educational material on the typography of regional scripts. This project is a contribution to that. Secondly, I have spent years in the state of Gujarat now, and I wanted to learn this language, especially reading it. Because missing a bus just because you cannot read what is written on it is not a fun experience, right? This project presented an opportunity to do that, and that too in an exciting and productive way.
Although Gandhinagar is the capital of Gujarat, Ahmedabad is far older. It is the largest and perhaps the most important city in Gujarat.
This project was done as a degree project under the Master of Design course at National Institute of Design.
Student: Tamojit Bardhan
Programme: Master of Design (M. Des.)
Guide: Amarnath Praful
Year: 2023
Discipline: Communication (Photography Design)