Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group, launched the intrinsically Indian font ‘Bharat’ in Mumbai over the Independence Day weekend, in the presence of Dr Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director of advertising agency Rediffusion and Kalyani Srivastava, Rediffusion’s Joint President. ‘Bharat’ is a commemorative font to celebrate 75 years of Rediffusion’s sister agency Everest, which coincides with 75 years of Indian Independence, and is rooted in Indian-ness.
Created by a team of top typographers at Everest and Rediffusion Design Studios, led by Virendra Tivrekar, Executive Creative Director, Rediffusion Studios, it visibly exudes Indian-ness and projects to the world the very essence of Indian-ness. “We looked at all the letters of the alphabet in all the Indian languages to draw inspiration and figure out which of these we could adapt, reshape and redesign into a uniquely different font that would coalesce the goodness of India’s diversity into a visual unity,” says Tivrekar, who is a JJ School alumnus, and specializes in typography. Over the last six months, the team of five - including Ajit Rakhade, Rohan Parab, Arif Khan and Akash Sharma, apart from Tivrekar - has been hard at work creating the font, appropriately called Bharat, as they researched, ideated, planned, executed and beautified it.
It has famously been said that typography is the use of type to advocate, communicate, celebrate, educate, elaborate, illuminate, and disseminate. Along the way, the words and pages become art. The team at Everest thought along the same lines when they thought of doing something special, something memorable, something long-lasting, and something beautiful to celebrate Everest@75 and India@75.
The Famous Five who developed the Bharat font (L toR): Arif Khan, Ajit Rakhade, Virender Tivrekar, Rohan Parab and Akash Sharma
Dr Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director of both Rediffusion & Everest says, “Happily for us, 75 years of Everest coincided with 75 years of Independence of our great nation, India. The agency team set its heart on designing a befitting tribute to India that would have utility and memorability beyond just a date. Hence was born the idea of the Bharat font that would epitomize the spirit of India. It was not until 2010 that India got itself a symbol for the rupee currency. So, having a font that is nationalistic and invokes pride by its usage is the driving force behind the creation of Bharat.”
Bharat has a strong phonetic underpin. Every letter of the alphabet is rooted in the letter’s phonetic sound in the parent Indian language – be it Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Devnagari, Gurmukhi, Kannada and more. For example the ‘Q’ is a combination of half a ‘ka’ and ‘va’ of Hindi, and rendered accordingly.
Bharat has been tested with consumer groups on easy readability. After initial exposure, there were no reading or usage issues. Initially, the font will have to be downloaded from a digital link, but can subsequently be used on both computers and mobiles without any difficulty.
Only one other country in the world has a font of its own –Sweden. Sweden Sans was created in 2014 by Stockholm agency Söderhavet which designed a modern geometric typeface inspired by 1950s signs to be used by the government and by business corporations.
