Make It New Again

Make it New Again: An identity for the Sangam 2012 conference on Innovation in Craft. We commissioned Mithila artist, Mamta Jha to create the Typecraft. Mithila art originates in the more popularly known district in Bihar called Madhubani. It is part of the tribal belt that encompasses Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Odisha.

In this project, we gave Mamta a non-visual verbal brief. In this manner, we wanted to give more respect to the artisan in coming up with the visuals. Initially we were very disappointed with the rendering.

However, we had another meeting where we suggested a few changes. The result of that was a sea change in the renderings of the letters. Eventually, we tweaked the letters further and applied them onto various collateral — signage, bags, notebooks etc.

After the completion of Make it New Again, we commissioned Mamta to complete the entire alphabet. Recently, we have begun to vectorize the letters in a process to make it a working typeface. Vectorization allows one to add colors, gradients, drop shadows and all sorts of effects — it frees the typeface!

We also created collaterals such as banners, labels, tags, gifts, bags etc, for the conference, Make it New Again, which was held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.