Indian Typefaces in Digital Platforms: Issues and Challenges

Typefaces are the primary means of reading. Without a quality display of the typeface on the display screen, reading becomes difficult. The paper aims to identify the display issues with the Indian typefaces on display screens. Further, the paper encounters the challenges and difficulties in the type design process with Indian scripts. India is a multilingual country with various scripts. Indian letterform structures are complex and sinuous. In this paper, the technical challenges related to the design process of Indian typefaces such as hinting, glyph positioning and substitution have been discussed. Hinting is a challenging task for Indian scripts since the letter structures are complex. Developing glyphs substitution instructions is a tedious task due to the large number of characters set. In the context of letter design, Indian letters lack a letterform grammar and visual language of type forms. Anatomical nomenclature and grid system are the primary deficiency in the design process that hinders the quality font production. Apart from that, identification of the legibility parameters is required for the Indian scripts to make the letters reading friendly and visually enhancing. Research on Indian typeface legibility has not been studied extensively. Therefore, a review on the current issues and challenges of Indian typeface becomes essential. The present paper is an attempt to discuss the design challenges and display issues with the Indian typefaces.