The View from Mumbai: three projects honouring and innovating with Indian street typography

Multidisciplinary artist Hanif Kureshi’s passing away in September this year was immensely heartbreaking for the Indian art and design community and a huge loss for the entire country. He was the artistic director and co-founder of St+Art, an organisation that works on various large scale street art projects across India, and therefore, it was almost impossible to not have come across his work in some or the other Indian city.

Before St+Art though, Hanif - who wanted to be a sign painter while growing up - started The Handpainted Type way back in 2011. He got local street painters from across India to make signs on banners – in English and some in Hindi and Urdu languages as well – which were then digitised into downloadable fonts. The sign painters would receive royalty through each download of the chargeable fonts. Hanif also got exciting work opportunities for exceptionally talented painters like Painter Kafeel. The project didn’t showcase these works as relics of the past which were being devoured by an explosion of flex and vinyl, but made them a part of the present and future in a very refreshing way – something that can even be used by contemporary graphic designers to experiment with.

The Handpainted Type, I feel, is really special as it laid the foundation for some really brilliant, ingenious projects Hanif was to create over the course of his life and inspire many creatives along the way. As a dedication to him and this project, in this column, I want to highlight the works of three creatives who are not just documenting Indian street typography, but crafting entire universes around them.

Tanya George

Having started off with type walks in Fort in 2018 (a treasure trove of art deco buildings), type designer Tanya George now conducts walks in different neighbourhoods of Mumbai.

With audiences from all walks of life, Tanya is conscious about not harping too much on the technical minutiae of type. Instead, she weaves in local cultural stories, nuggets of history, and highlights the changes in the street type landscape. She believes that people might not remember terminology or jargon describing a particular sign, but these stories will stay with them. While Tanya’s work involves research and writing as well, having free-wheeling, ever-evolving conversations during her type walks is something she cherishes the most. “I can share my opinions a lot more freely and encourage spirited conversations with the participants, which can’t happen for something that I’ve written. This also ensures that no two walks of mine are ever the same.”

A walk I personally attended with Tanya was in Bandra where she seemed most excited when she showed us the sign of a tiny shop called S.S. Dias & Co. Men’s Wear on Hill Road, one of the busiest shopping streets in Mumbai. A family-owned venture founded in 1930, S.S.Dias has a handmade, striking yellow wooden sign mounted over a wire mesh, a fantastic, sturdy example of signage from the pre-digital era that has managed to survive. Tanya made us notice the subtle details and changes, like how the ‘e’ and ‘a’ have been interchanged in the ‘wear’. The sign now also includes the mandatory Devanagari script on the top, based on the rules and regulations in the state of Maharashtra. “Signs are living, breathing entities that are constantly responding to the changes around them,” she says.

Now every time I am on that road, I can’t help but always look at the sign. The creation of this community that’s beginning to notice and appreciate the typography around them has been a great outcome of initiatives like Tanya’s. “This is what I want to achieve through my work – generate a sense of curiosity and interest in signs around us, and not just document through a lens of nostalgia. I feel that if people start to notice, they will also start caring for the skills and hard work that’s gone behind these signs. And this might eventually lead to interesting changes and solutions for the future,” she says.

Pooja Saxena

Type and graphic designer Pooja Saxena believes in the importance of documenting non-digital letterforms as they often represent visual paradigms that have been lost in translation to digital media. She also feels that printing and typographic technologies are mainly centred around the Latin script and often end up pushing Indic scripts to the periphery, labeling them “complex”.

She started the India Street Lettering project to document local street types along with their location, scripts, function, and material/technique. Pooja wants to showcase letterforms in a way that allows them to be regarded as the well-crafted and culturally-relevant design solutions they can be, rather than focus on nostalgia or sentimentality.

Having forayed into the world of street lettering through type walks – first in Delhi in 2017 and then in Bangalore – Pooja also started publishing zines in 2023. The first batch showcased tiles as a media for letterforms, from the Portuguese colonial influence in the azulejos of Panjim (a city in Goa) to tiled wayfinding signage in Delhi. In the second set, she featured cinema signs from Lucknow, Kolkata, and Hyderabad and asked questions about how architectural and typographic styles may complement each other on a building. “With the zines, I want to illuminate patterns – established and unexpected – to expand our shared understanding of typographic forms and styles, and conventions for their use,” she says.

Her work has also found its audience through essays, a short film, exhibitions, and through teaching as well, which I personally find really interesting. “Locally made signs offer up ways of combining different typographic styles and scripts in ways that would not be encouraged in formal design education… Documenting, studying, and appreciating such examples is an invaluable tool to broaden our perspectives and accept that there isn’t one correct (Western) way to approach typography.”

In future, Pooja wants to include more photographs from more cities in her digital archive, and add credits for sign makers as and when they are available to further elevate the value of this work. She wants to also start speaking with sign makers, documenting their processes, learning about local typographic and sign-making vocabularies, and even dabbling in their crafts.

Aashim Tyagi

Street Type Archive was started by Aashim Tyagi about 15 years back when he was working as a graphic designer in Bombay. Initially, the project focused on examining the city’s rich and varied typography as an inspiration to apply in his designs. “As my own practice gradually shifted to art and photography, I found that the typography of the city allowed me to go beyond just the technical and aesthetic values and notice the deeper cultural context, how these signs are woven into the identity of a place and reflect its stories, people, and everyday life. This cultural essence is what excites me most about Indian street type: the diversity of scripts, languages, and design trends make it an endlessly fascinating subject,” he says.

Aashim recently published his first in the series of many upcoming zines (and eventually a book too) called Bombay Eats. “The zines offer an accessible, engaging format for a broader audience. I wanted something fun yet meaningful, where people could experience the project in a tactile, personal way…I also enjoy how zines allow for different types of storytelling: Bombay Eats captured city life and the food culture of Bombay, while the upcoming issue focuses on Balasinor, a small town in Gujarat, with its stunning Indian-Deco homes and vibrant Gujarati typography in all its maximalist charm.”

For Aashim, his explorations in art and photography have begun to influence the way he approaches the Street Type Archive, moving it beyond documentation toward “something more poetic and expressive”. He wants to document typography across more cities in India, while also incorporating typography stories from other countries like Fiji, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore. His vision is to make Street Type Archive a digital archive where images are indexed and searchable across different cultural and technical contexts and then eventually, a physical archive to preserve and exhibit these signs.

“It’s not just about preserving old signs; it’s also about exploring contemporary issues and the future of typography as it adapts to new technologies, aesthetics, and social changes,” he ends.

Payal shares more resources for exploring the history and rich design landscape of hand-painted typography in Mumbai and wider India.

• Check out collaborative type studios The Indian Type Foundry and Ek Type (especially their project Letterbox India)

• Art Deco Mumbai’s Instagram is a great resource for unique insights into the art deco buildings of the city and the types of lettering associated with them

• I really enjoyed reading this piece on Sahapedia about hand-painted signs during my research

• The #AamArtistGallery, a part of the Mumbai Paused project by photographer Gopal MS, is a treasure trove of hyperlocal hand-painted art and lettering across the city.