Kannada letters in a different style: T Narasipura man designs new fonts

MYSURU: Manjunatha R, 34, a resident of T Narasipur, and a lead designer serving in a firm in the city, has recently designed five new Kannada Unicode fonts with two styles. He has already designed a Kannada and the new ones make it six for this year.
He has named one font as ATS Bengaluru as it is more appropriate for LED boards and designs and gives the feeling IT hub of the world Bengaluru for the users and audience.
“My first font was Bandipur which I released in January this year. It was inspired by elephants. As elephants come to our mind when we talk about Bandipur, I named that font as Bandipur. It is more suitable for headlines, posters, print, etc,” he said.
“I decided to develop Bengaluru font as Kannada unicode fonts don’t appear properly on LED screens. Initially, I assumed that it was a mistake in LED. But later I realized that there are no proper fonts in Kannada Unicode that can be used for LED displays. So, I developed this,” said Manjunatha.
“The next fonts on the pipeline are Mysuru, Anekal, and Chikkamagalur. As the fonts create emotions in us, I am designing them based on famous places,” he said.
The Bengaluru font is a group of five fonts - Dot, Smooth, Pixel, Squared, and LED. “When I was a boy, I was writing banners, pamphlets by hand. I always wanted to develop a new style of writing. The Covid-19 induced break gave me the required time to learn the coding to develop fonts,” said Manjunatha, who was a graphic and animation tutor before becoming a lead designer.
“I created these fonts through font coding (Python script). All these fonts are compatible with all systems. They can be downloaded free of cost from my website Akshara Type Studio,” he said.