ITC Simran

Samples:

The traditional scripts of northern India, especially the widely used Devanagari, are derived from ancient Sanskrit and show the influence of being written with a hollow pen. Satwinder Sehmi, the London calligrapher and graphic designer has brought the calligraphic feel of Devanagari into a display type for the Latin alphabet. Named after one of Sehmi’s daughters, ITC Simran shows the variation of thick and thin strokes that comes from calligraphy created with a broad-edged pen held at a constant angle with manipulations. The type’s rounded curves and some of the individual letterforms recall European uncial lettering, but the flow of the letters and the words is reminiscent of the scripts of India. “After some research,” says Sehmi, “I found that the main impression Europeans have of Indian lettering is that the lettering hangs from a top bar. I worked with this premise in mind and tried to remain true to the feeling. Indian faces do not have an uppercase, and this created some difficulties, as I felt that we had to have some variation between the headline and body text. I made a decision that the text face should not have the top bar, as it would be very difficult to read.” Whereas the Indian letters seem to hang from the bar above them, most of the letters of Simran don’t actually touch the bar, but sit under it. “There was a considerable amount of tweaking that had to be done when kerning the headline version, in that all the top bars had to marry up, to give the impression of the top line.” In the digital font, the display letters are in the uppercase position; the text letters are in the lowercase position. Since the characters with bars and those without aren’t meant to be combined, it’s important to use Simran as either all caps or all lowercase, never both in the same line.