Devanagari Anatomy

As part of a study of Devanagari — an Indic typeface — I created a poster that attempted to describe the variety of typographical characteristics through a variety of different terms, almost the same way as different names for the parts of the human body.

While some terms are drawn from regular typographical terminology, I had to create a number of new terms taking into account the differences in the typographical forms.

I’m still not satisfied with the result as I believe a script as old as Devanagari, which was used to write ancient languages like Sanskrit as well as modern Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Konkani and Bhojpuri cannot be force-fitted onto a relatively new typographical classification system without taking into account its history and origins and understanding the script’s true form.