For years, typeface designer and typographer Pooja Saxena has been photographing different typefaces around India. It was only after she moved away from Bangalore that she decided to create a single home for all the street lettering photos she had sitting on her computer hard drive, pooling them together in the website India Street Lettering.
This ongoing series features not only the unique typography gems scattered around the city, but also stories about the cultural and historical aspects of each lettering, and the maps of each signage’s location.
“Like elsewhere in the world, handmade signs are being replaced by printed or machine-manufactured ones in India,” says Pooja. “The interesting thing about India, though, is that there are so many languages spoken here that are written in so many scripts. None of them have the quantity or quality of typefaces available in them, as English does. So the expressiveness and individuality of handmade signs cannot really be replicated using the very limited number of typefaces that are available. In the bright side, hand-painted signs have inspired typefaces that bring a bit more colour and flair to typography.”
In 2017, Pooja started offering typography walks — a way to share her love for typography to others. One of her walks takes participants through a Delhi neighbourhood near a major railway station. “The area is full of garish neon signs advertising cheap hotels, and signs in over a dozen Indian and international scripts,” she shares. “It is the perfect place to introduce people to the notion that just like architecture, street lettering is a window into how a city or neighbourhood has developed.”
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Images © Pooja Saxena / with permission