Anagha Narayanan
 

TYPE

Ilai

TYPE

Garnish

TYPE

Sharp Earth Devanagari

POSTER

The National

BRANDING

All Kind Studio

EDITORIAL

Your Highness

BRANDING

Aditi Candles

EDITORIAL

Black Foundry Catalogue


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SHARP EARTH DEVANAGARI
Role: Typeface Designer
Year: 2021–2024

Typeface Design
CREDITS
Type Director: Lucas Sharp
Designers: Anagha Narayanan, Arya Purohit
Font Engineer: EkType
Images: Sharp Type Co.,Anagha Narayanan

Read full case study
Available through Sharp Type  
Sharp Earth is a multi-script sans serif typeface spearheaded by Lucas Sharp and drawn in collaboration with a team of local experts from around the globe. As a contemporary expression of the international style, Sharp Earth is unified by a forward-looking aesthetic paradigm that has been drawn by and for a truly global design culture. Sharp Earth doesn’t neatly exist in any single sub-genre of the Sans Serif pantheon. Rather, it brings together core aspects of disparate sub-genres of sans serif type that share an emphasis on warmth, pragmatism, and utility.

The meticulous design process involved studying Devanagari signage, calligraphy manuals, and book covers, alongside a thorough examination of Sharp Earth Latin's stylistic nuances. The result is a craftfully executed script that mirrors Sharp Earth’s overall warmth, approachability, and groundedness while translating certain key stylistic quirks—such as the Latin’s ink traps, top-heavy Grotesk proportions, and geometric terminals—into a new context. 




Finding the right texture balance between two scripts that are traditionally and structurally very different was the biggest design challenge. The forms in Devanagari are a lot more populated, which could contribute to overall darker textures. In terms of unifying the two scripts, the main considerations were geometric connections and a slight flaring-out at stroke endings. 



Sharp Earth Latin's varying grotesk-like proportions—where rounded glyphs are wider and the /E, /S, and other letterforms are relatively narrower—were emulated in Devanagari in letters like ड, ठ, ह, and छ.



The decision was made to design the black and thin weights to work for display sizes predominantly, and the regular and other intermediates to work for text. Sharp Earth Latin’s mix of geometric and grotesk features doesn’t comply with one model, but contains a blend of different influences. 


© 2024 ANAGHA NARAYANAN
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