DURGA PUJA TYPEFACE
01 — WHAT WAS THE IDEA?
Can a whole festival live inside 26 letterforms?
THE START
Started with photographs of pandals, alpona floor drawings and the curved shapes of the dhak. Collected ornament until the alphabet had a vocabulary.
MAKING IT
Sketched every glyph twice — once loose on paper, once tight on the grid. Killed a whole ornamental version that was too pretty to read.
THE DESIGN
Final set: 26 uppercase display glyphs with shared ornament joints, tested at poster scale and in tiny caption sizes.
MAKE IT MOVE
Letters assemble stroke-by-stroke, like the pandal being built overnight.
06 — FINAL RESULT
A display typeface built from festival ornament, drums and dhunuchi smoke.
WHAT I LEARNED
Ornament is easy. Rhythm is hard. The typeface only worked once I made the boring letters as interesting as the fun ones.