Video: Kimya Gandhi – The Act of Pressing a Key: The Journey of a Letterform on to Your Screen

Kimya Gandhi is a type designer from Mumbai with a passionate interest in Indic type design. Together with her partner Rob Keller she runs the type foundry Mota Italic in Berlin. In Düsseldorf she took us on a wonderful journey from ancient Brahmi inscriptions through metal type cast in Rome to today’s playful variable fonts. All triggered by the simple act of pressing a single key.

You can watch the whole presentation on our YouTube channel, as well as here and on her beyond tellerrand speaker profile.

The Act of Pressing a Key: The Journey of a Letterform on to Your Screen

We live in a world where we encounter letterforms every day. We type on our phones, read books, glance at advertisements on the train, follow signage to reach our destinations. Letterforms don't just carry information – they are a means of expression, shaped by history, culture, and context.

These forms have evolved over centuries, across regions and writing systems. One such script is Devanagari, used to write languages like Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit, and read by hundreds of millions of people.

Join Kimya on the journey of a letterform – from its conception as a drawn shape to its behaviour as digital text on your screen. Drawing from her own experience designing Devanagari typefaces, she reflects on what it means to work with a script that carries cultural memory while constantly being reshaped by new tools and contexts. What does it mean to design for a script you grew up with? And how can type design become a way of re-seeing and re-claiming what feels familiar?

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More information about and photos of Kimya Gandhi on her beyond tellerrand speaker profile page.

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