Akhand Multiscript now supports all of India’s official scripts

We are pleased to announce a large extension to our popular Akhand series, which more than doubles the number of scripts it supports. Akhand is a system of monolinear sans-serif style fonts from the Indian Type Foundry, made both for the Indian scripts, as well as several others. The superfamily already supported Bengali, Devanagari, Latin, Malayalam, and Tamil. As of today, it also supports Arabic, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Odia, Telugu, and Sinhala. With the addition of these 7 scripts, Akhand now supports all of India’s official writing systems. Apart from the 11 Indian scripts, Akhannd also Supports Sinhala, the official language of Sri Lanka.

Each of our new Akhand families includes eight different styles. These range in weight from Extralight through Black. The typefaces’ letterforms are condensed; many of them are drawn with straight sides. While the shapes used in each of the Akhand subfamilies are script-specific, they all share a similar dynamic. Typically rounded elements have been made compact; their verticals are flattened. This ‘straightening out’ gives text set in the typefaces a streamlined look. The Akhand typefaces’ modular forms bear a strong commonality to each other, without strings of characters becoming repetitive in text. Not every aspect of Akhand’s design is constructed, however. The curves in its modules have all been optically corrected, which removes the mechanical nature that could otherwise become too dominant. Akhand’s modularity extends beyond the formal level, too.

In every script, Akhand is fine-tooled for use in corporate identity design, editorial design, and even signage systems. Although we primarily developed the fonts for headline setting, the Light, Regular, and Semibold styles are suitable for use in short paragraphs of running text. The lighter and heavier styles are an optimal choice for headlines, or for single word settings, like logos. The broad range of weights makes combinations with a strong degree of contrast possible; the lightest and the heaviest styles may be mixed to create a powerful effect in your design. 

The base character height in the Akhand fonts is ‘big on the body’. Across a line of text, the consonantal forms take up the majority of vertical space. Vowel marks above and below have been shortened – keeping these to a minimum allows for lines of text to be set more closely together vertically. The reduction of interlinear space is paramount for successful headline typesetting, and Akhand performs much better in display applications than similar fonts with more elongated vowel marks. Because of their reduced hight, the typeface’s vowel mark forms have been simplified somewhat out of necessity, but this stylistic reduction is in keeping with the modular feeling of the typeface’s overall design. Dot-shaped marks appear rounded in order to help maintain their differentiation from other marks.

Who worked on the family’s new styles? Akhand Arabic wad designed by Bahman Eslami and Michelle Parmar. Akhand Gujarati was designed by Parimal Parmar, Akhand Gurmukhi by Namrata Goyal, Akhand Kannada and Telugug by Jonny Pinhorn, Ramakrishna Saiteja & Nikhil Ranganathan, Akhand Odia by Jyotish Sonowal, and Akhand Sinhala by Aditi Pimprikar. Michelle Parmar also designed Akhand Thai which will be published later this year.