Work by an unknown sign painter for ArtLife in Kolkata, captured by Pooja Saxena for her India Street Lettering initiative.
Since 2013, Pooja Saxena has been documenting Indian street lettering in all its forms. As this culimates in a new book from Blaft Publications, which can be pre-ordered on the dedicated Kickstarter, I invited her to share her insights into the sign painting themes within her work.
India Street Lettering is a 200-page book presenting the documentary photography and detailed research that Pooja has carried out across the country. Get the Book
Indian Sign Painting: A Typeface Designer’s Take on the Craft
By Pooja Saxena
It was not long after I began documenting street lettering in India that I became jaded by its singular perception — one that focused solely on sign painting and was outrightly colourful and flamboyant — that had taken hold of public imagination. More so because I could see that there were several non-digital methods and techniques of sign-making popular in the country at different times, and many design idioms flourished.
Of course, ignoring local design traditions for dominant global narratives is bad, but flattening them to a common denominator felt no better. And I couldn’t help but ask, why this identity — was it a vision for Indian street culture that seemed most palatable? My attention shifted, therefore: to ribbon lettering in metal, to experiments in mosaic, to possibilities in wood.
While I had never doubted the immense skill of sign painters, it took coming back to their work with new perspectives and a curiosity to see beyond the surface. I focused on recording signs and stories with the intention of zooming in, concerning myself first with the scale of the neighbourhood, rather than sweeping generalisations. If the exuberant adjectives used to describe sign painting felt vacuous, it was time to learn the language of the trade in local tongues. [Pooja explored some of this language in her recent BLAG Meet talk.] And most of all, I looked at painted letterforms with similar inquisitiveness and criticality that I do typefaces.
Work by an unknown sign painter for Mohan Lal Aggarwal & Sons, New Delhi.
Searching for Local Typographic Flavour
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