That type of city

Introduce your young one to the world of typography at a virtual workshop, and let them take a tour of the city through its many signboards

From a Japanese Buddhist temple in Worli to a potters’ association in Dharavi, there’s much to discover in the city if you learn to observe the signboards around you. And in the pre-pandemic days, 31-year-old type designer Tanya George would traipse across the city, especially in SoBo, with participants of her type walks to soak in the history and theory behind these signboards. However, since we can’t step out, the Mahim resident is set to decode the world of typography for 13-to-17 year olds and also take them on a virtual typographic tour of Mumbai, through her two-part session called Type Cooking.

Organised by Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, the online workshop will be held over two weekends. The typographer and design educator, who works with fonts, explains that typography is the art of arranging letters on any kind of layout. George adds that the first part of the workshop will be an introduction to typography. She’ll demystify terms that help describe letters and techniques to hand-make letterforms. “I’ll be talking about the difference between typography, lettering and calligraphy. They’re all cousins of each other, but they’re very distinct terms. We’ll also decode simple terms like serif, sans serif, and the difference between italics and Roman,” she shares.

All of this information will be simultaneously contextualised using relative visuals and examples from across Mumbai. “A lot of these visuals are signboards that I came across during my cycling tours in the lockdown. So, we’ll move across the city — Dadar, Sion, Bandra, Girgaum and other places. I’m hoping to familiarise participants with parts of Mumbai that they might not have come across or noticed before,” she asserts.

In the second part of the workshop, the participants will get to create letterforms themselves. “This will be a tactile activity where they’ll create letterforms with the help of easily available materials such as newspapers, paper, stickers, pen, pencil and sellotape. The idea is to have fun with it,” she says.

Tanya George

George hopes to make the virtual sessions interactive, with a quiz too. At the end of it, she hopes that the children walk away with a sense of appreciation. “The knowledge of typography equips you to observe texts, scripts and languages around you more and dive deeper into it,” she signs off.

Destinations from the typographic tour. Pics Courtesy/Tanya George Graphic/Uday Mohite

On: May 29 and June 5; 11 am to 12.30 pm
Email: education@bdlmuseum.org to register
Cost: Rs 200 for both sessions

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