Mahāmudrā | Type design | Verticality, contrast, rounded shoulders and readability

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

Readability in type design is always important. More so for a text font than a display font, and some fonts, like Mahāmudrā perhaps, push the envelope. At the end of the day, if you can't read it, it's not a success. One of my (self imposed) goals for Mahāmudrā is that I should be able to set the type vertically and left to right so that the words “maha” and “mudra” appear in basically the same way as the original Tibetan Mongolian seal.

As such it has emerged that the traditional application of upper and lower case letters can be abandoned. The use of upper and lowercase becomes more of a leading/kerning and letter spacing tool.

In the original seal a couple of ligatures are used to achieve the vertical symmetry the geometry requires. In this case, however, I think the readability is already challenging enough that if I introduce ligatures (especially unconventional ones like u/d!) they might make the words (and letters) undecipherable. In order to support readability there needs to be decisive spacing between all the letters - no fancy typographical workarounds.

That notwithstanding, I am allowing myself vertical kerning. Given the unconventionally wide letterforms, all the minor tweaks and adjustments need to be in service of readability. Mahamudra can be challenging (should be challenging - emptiness is simple but not easy) but it can’t be unreadable.

I enjoy the challenge of making the antique (more) geometric. I'm sure it's neither novel nor unique, but there is this weird sense of failure and inevitability when consistency and predictability have to be abandoned in service of beauty and practicality. Just like the Mahāmudrā itself there are moments in type design when you just have to give in and embrace the unknowable.

Two other problems became obvious during this process: rounded corners and contrast. These, on the other hand, are knowable.