Mahāmudrā | Designing an alphabet | Letters are just lines

Typeface: Mahāmudrā; Classification: monospace, sans serif, display; Styles: wide, square; Weights: heavy, thin; Inspiration: Mahāmudrā

Mahāmudrā came differently than most. Usually designing an entire alphabet takes time. There is exploration and cross checking against other letters and fonts. Perhaps because of it geometric nature Mahāmudrā came out like one big ol' brain dump. Or rather a brainless dump. Just following the grid. The Letterforms rolled out one after the other, starting with “A” and proceeding in order through “Z”. 

In its basic form Mahāmudrā is not a complicated typeface. It can be easy to forget that most letterforms are not complicated. At their most basic letters are simple glyphs. Working on a font that is inspired by an ancient alphabet, in this case Tibetan/Mongolian, decontextualizes the letterforms. It's good to be reminded that in spite of all the attention we give them, all the varied flourishes and forms, the hundreds of thousands of fonts, that they are nothing special. Without context and and experience letters are just lines.

Like us. Nothing special. One of billions, not substantively different from any other.

It's early days yet but all the letters, uppercase and lowercase, are out. I'm sure there will be months of tweaking and considerations. Adding the unique mostly unseen embellishments that will give the font personality and each letter its own unique self.