Tiro Tamil has its origins in a typeface designed for the Murty Classical Library of India book series, so is especially suited to traditional literary publishing but also made with the needs of today’s multiple print and screen media in mind. The design takes inspiration from Tamil metal types developed in Madras (Chennai) in the 19th and early 20th Century, which were influenced by both traditional palm leaf manuscripts and contemporary writing. The stroke modulation makes for a dynamic design for modern typography, while traditional forms of ligatures are accessible via OpenType Layout features. For the Open Font License release, Tiro Tamil has been extended to support additional characters, and features a new italic companion suitable for traditional slanted Tamil typography. Each font also includes a Latin subset including diacritics for transcription of Indian languages.
Tiro Kannada was designed by Fernando Mello and Fiona Ross. The italic was adapted by Kaja Słojewska.
To contribute, see github.com/TiroTypeworks/Indigo.
Two type designers separated by an eight-hour time difference, an ocean, and pandemic travel bans collaborated over video calls and email to make a cohesive set of fonts in 8 South Asian languages. In 2012, Harvard University Press commissioned Fiona Ross and John Hudson, through Tiro Typeworks, to design typefaces for the Murty Classical Library of India book series. The publisher needed to reprint ancient Indian literary, historical, and religious texts, including Vedic and early Sanskrit works. Since these old texts had been printed using traditional letterforms and early Indian typography techniques, the new fonts needed to retain some of the traditional style of the old texts, yet be clear and legible in modern print and digital media.
In 2019 Google Fonts approached Tiro to make an extended and updated version of the Murty Fonts to be released as open source fonts in the Tiro Indic collection, offering users traditional text styles suitable for a variety of uses.
Before designing the typefaces, it was important to research classical texts and understand the unique characteristics of the languages.
“We looked at very lovely manuscripts or early Indian printed materials from the 18th or 19th Centuries,” said John Hudson.
To learn more, read Modern Tiro Indic collection for classical South Asian texts.