9 ms·

Indian Sign Painting: A typeface designer's take on the craft

219 points by detaro 1y ago

lelandfe 1y ago
As a type nerd, wowza; this is why I come to HN. I'd never even think to look for this. Thanks for the share. Love the over the top Amrit D.J. Band ones; they remind me of old school Barnum & Bailey signs.
- bapak 1y ago
  The Philippines has similar billboards and painted jeepneys you might like. Lots of signs have now been replaced by advertisement banners though (Coke prints your store sign, all signs look the same, coke logo bigger than your store name)
davchana 1y ago
Related, there are many painters, who work as employees at truck repair or denting painting shops, and write generic words like TANK on Diesel Tank, or like OK BYE TATA on rear bumper, or simply names, with dome petals around them. They start with a yellow rectangle, and then paint black lines as negative space, eventually bringing out yellow letters out.
ping00 1y ago
Thanks for sharing! I always love looking at the hand-painted advertisements when I'm back in India. I almost never see it in the cities these days (billboards have taken over), but back in my parents' villages, a lot of older painted advertisements (like Maha Cement) are still there on the walls that run past the main street. On a side note, I have an HTTP200 license plate and I want to get some nice Indian truck style lettering saying HORN <HTTP200> PLEASE around it :)
- atonse 1y ago
  HAHA. This joke made my day. What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood.
  - muststopmyths 1y ago
    "horn please", to tell people to honk while passing. OK was originally a separate thing that used to occur in locations other than between the two words. I distinctly recall this from my childhood. Don't know the origins of it but there is some suggestion on the internet that it was copied from Tata trucks which had the logo of the OK soap (a lotus). They could occur in the current order, but it was not necessary. It should still be read as separate from the "horn please" phrase. As the country became functionally more illiterate over the years (yes, probably a controversial opinion :) ), the three words were just rote copied inline and painted on trucks, with the meaning lost to time.
    - __rito__ 1y ago
      OK means: "On Kerosene". See: https://trucksfloor.com/en/blog/horn-ok-please-on-indian-truck https://trucksfloor.com/en/blog/horn-ok-please-on-indian-tru...
      - muststopmyths 1y ago
        I would love to see a reliable source for this. All I have ever found is people on the internet asserting this to be true, but no actual evidence (in the form of contemporaneous pictures or documents from WW2).
  - gopalv 1y ago
    > What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood. I was told that this was the polite honk triplet - the two honk call and one honk response. "honk honk" / "honk" "horn ok" / "please"
  - __rito__ 1y ago
    It is just Horn Please. OK is a historical artefact. During WW2, due to fuel shortages, Indian trucks often switched to Kerosene. OK means: "On Kerosene". OK was painted on the back of trucks and other vehicles to warn other drivers to maintain a safe distance because Kerosene is highly flammable. Due to another meaning of OK, they just kept doing it. [0] [0]: https://www.fr8.in/blog/why-is-horn-ok-please-written-behind-trucks https://www.fr8.in/blog/why-is-horn-ok-please-written-behind...
- zem 1y ago
  a project that has been on my todo list for years is to crowd source the dividing line between "horn ok please" and "sound ok horn" (I saw the latter for the first time when I lived in Bangalore, but I gathered it was the common version in the south, which implies the existence of a border marking the transition)
- bjackman 1y ago
  I visited India about 10 years ago and I often saw hand-painted advert murals for global products like Coca-Cola. I thought this was a really cool thing to see! It's nice to hear these things are still visible. I wonder if anyone is still painting them? It would seem surprising, but then it was certainly surprising to me 10 years ago too so I would not bet my life against it.
  - kamaal 1y ago
    >>I wonder if anyone is still painting them? Yes, its quite thing even today. The banners tend to tear and fly away due to high winds. So painting is still a thing in pretty much all over India. I even knew a neighbour who would do it. Like he painted our street address on our home. He also did many such things on highways. Not sure if you know this, most such painters are illiterates and will have a hard time writing anything by hand. So its less of a font painting, more like a art form for them. Only a while back, even movie posters were painted and quite honestly they would be stunning. I have seen them as a kid and would inspire awe. On a tangential note, a classmate of mine had a flare for it, and he even did some projects with making huge mega massive stunning artistic displays with paint and thermocol, not sure what he is doing now, but back then those things looked quite impressive.
- aptwebapps 1y ago
  So close ... https://cdn.qwenlm.ai/output/wV1bg6891b9b1082439d7000d4397472f/t2i/e5daeea6-576c-488e-b3e5-031bdc3070f4/1754380865.png?key=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJyZXNvdXJjZV91c2VyX2lkIjoid1YxYmc2ODkxYjliMTA4MjQzOWQ3MDAwZDQzOTc0NzJmIiwicmVzb3VyY2VfaWQiOiIxNzU0MzgwODY1IiwicmVzb3VyY2VfY2hhdF9pZCI6IjczNDRjN2NjLWVhMjgtNGU4NC1iZTliLTNkZTdjZjNiYjhiMCJ9.fcdoZry0Ne6LsDPnP_9fPSmbbzzcUGrHLjMVR-5Hfz4 https://cdn.qwenlm.ai/output/wV1bg6891b9b1082439d7000d439747...
artur_makly 1y ago
Can someone now Vibe-code a web font-generation tool that converts these typographic gems into full embeddable web-fonts?
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  Fontself Maker for Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop or Glyphr Studio can convert vector drawings of these sign paintings into usable web fonts, though capturing their hand-painted nuances remains challenging.
shayonj 1y ago
This is v cool! thanks for sharing
asadm 1y ago
I am a noob, but is the Zohran Mamdani (new NYC mayor candidate)'s campaign also using this style of typeface for the logos etc. It looks similar.
- lelandfe 1y ago
  From a search it seems it was largely born from NYC bodega signage (which is ~every culture on the planet; my bodegas over the years have been Pakistani, Senegalese, Ghanaian, Haitian, Mexican...) but some Bollywood posters' influence (one article says he asked for it specifically, others that that's just an inspiration). So, yes.
- knifie_spoonie 1y ago
  Do you have any links that we can check out? I'm curious to see what they look like now.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- rmk 1y ago
  It would not be surprising, because Mamdani's mother is Mira Nair, a renowned filmmaker (who is primarily makes movies for a western audience, but is heavily influenced by Bollywood).
manas96 1y ago
I've always observed a curious thing within India regarding the Devnagari (Hindi) and Latin (English) scripts. Essentially all English words are always written in Devnagari, but it's rarely the other way around. For example it is much more likely to see इंग्लिश टू हिंदी than "angrezi se hindi". My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.
- OJFord 1y ago
  I'm not sure if I don't understand, or completely disagree, but if you look anywhere 'digital' like Reddit for example, a lot of Hindi is written in Latin script. WhatsApp too in private communication, where people don't have or haven't understood how to use a devanagari (or transliterating) keyboard on their phone. As a Britisher learner it's frustrating¹ actually, because there is a standard for how to do this - IAST, for Sanskrit/derived generally - but of course that's not what native speakers use casually. E.g. your 'angrezi se hindi' would be 'añgrezī se hiñdī' but anyone writing Hindi with those accents is foreign or an academic. (Also people will casually write 'ay' instead of 'e' ए or 'ee' for 'ī' ई, etc. cf. 'paneer'.) [1: The frustration is because it leads to ambiguity, whereas IAST is 1:1 and so preserves the phonetic nature of devanāgarī, and tells me exactly which t/d/r sound, if it's aspirated, etc. which a fluent native layperson's anglicised interpretation really doesn't. They might write gora & gora and know from context if that's gora or ghoṛā, but if I don't already know the word a gora like me is stuck.]
  - ashishb 1y ago
    Many foreign learners have written about it. Essentially, one can follow conventions around oneself or try to write and get an English spelling that sounds closest to Hindi pronunciation. And there are no academic rules around it that one is taught in schools in India. I learnt about IAST only after seeing how foreigners transcribe Sanskrit texts in Latin. See this amazing article by a Polish journalist https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/spell-it-out-should-english-transcription-of-indian-words-be-reformed/ https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/spell-it-out-should-english-...
  - 1y ago
OJFord 1y ago
Tangential novel recommendation: A House for Mr Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)
pinoy420 1y ago
[dead]
desaiguddu 1y ago
Original Website: https://indiastreetlettering.com https://indiastreetlettering.com This website is put together by a friend who runs - https://3sided.co.in https://3sided.co.in
suchoudh 1y ago
Wow, it seems this newspost isolated all Hindi Speakers (mostly Indians !!! ) watching news.yc
underdog_hp 1y ago
[dead]

219 points by detaro 1y ago

As a type nerd, wowza; this is why I come to HN. I'd never even think to look for this. Thanks for the share. Love the over the top Amrit D.J. Band ones; they remind me of old school Barnum & Bailey signs.

bapak 1y ago
The Philippines has similar billboards and painted jeepneys you might like. Lots of signs have now been replaced by advertisement banners though (Coke prints your store sign, all signs look the same, coke logo bigger than your store name)

davchana 1y ago

Related, there are many painters, who work as employees at truck repair or denting painting shops, and write generic words like TANK on Diesel Tank, or like OK BYE TATA on rear bumper, or simply names, with dome petals around them. They start with a yellow rectangle, and then paint black lines as negative space, eventually bringing out yellow letters out.

ping00 1y ago

Thanks for sharing! I always love looking at the hand-painted advertisements when I'm back in India. I almost never see it in the cities these days (billboards have taken over), but back in my parents' villages, a lot of older painted advertisements (like Maha Cement) are still there on the walls that run past the main street. On a side note, I have an HTTP200 license plate and I want to get some nice Indian truck style lettering saying HORN <HTTP200> PLEASE around it :)

atonse 1y ago
HAHA. This joke made my day. What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood.
- muststopmyths 1y ago
  "horn please", to tell people to honk while passing. OK was originally a separate thing that used to occur in locations other than between the two words. I distinctly recall this from my childhood. Don't know the origins of it but there is some suggestion on the internet that it was copied from Tata trucks which had the logo of the OK soap (a lotus). They could occur in the current order, but it was not necessary. It should still be read as separate from the "horn please" phrase. As the country became functionally more illiterate over the years (yes, probably a controversial opinion :) ), the three words were just rote copied inline and painted on trucks, with the meaning lost to time.
  - __rito__ 1y ago
    OK means: "On Kerosene". See: https://trucksfloor.com/en/blog/horn-ok-please-on-indian-truck https://trucksfloor.com/en/blog/horn-ok-please-on-indian-tru...
    - muststopmyths 1y ago
      I would love to see a reliable source for this. All I have ever found is people on the internet asserting this to be true, but no actual evidence (in the form of contemporaneous pictures or documents from WW2).
- gopalv 1y ago
  > What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood. I was told that this was the polite honk triplet - the two honk call and one honk response. "honk honk" / "honk" "horn ok" / "please"
- __rito__ 1y ago
  It is just Horn Please. OK is a historical artefact. During WW2, due to fuel shortages, Indian trucks often switched to Kerosene. OK means: "On Kerosene". OK was painted on the back of trucks and other vehicles to warn other drivers to maintain a safe distance because Kerosene is highly flammable. Due to another meaning of OK, they just kept doing it. [0] [0]: https://www.fr8.in/blog/why-is-horn-ok-please-written-behind-trucks https://www.fr8.in/blog/why-is-horn-ok-please-written-behind...
zem 1y ago
a project that has been on my todo list for years is to crowd source the dividing line between "horn ok please" and "sound ok horn" (I saw the latter for the first time when I lived in Bangalore, but I gathered it was the common version in the south, which implies the existence of a border marking the transition)
bjackman 1y ago
I visited India about 10 years ago and I often saw hand-painted advert murals for global products like Coca-Cola. I thought this was a really cool thing to see! It's nice to hear these things are still visible. I wonder if anyone is still painting them? It would seem surprising, but then it was certainly surprising to me 10 years ago too so I would not bet my life against it.
- kamaal 1y ago
  >>I wonder if anyone is still painting them? Yes, its quite thing even today. The banners tend to tear and fly away due to high winds. So painting is still a thing in pretty much all over India. I even knew a neighbour who would do it. Like he painted our street address on our home. He also did many such things on highways. Not sure if you know this, most such painters are illiterates and will have a hard time writing anything by hand. So its less of a font painting, more like a art form for them. Only a while back, even movie posters were painted and quite honestly they would be stunning. I have seen them as a kid and would inspire awe. On a tangential note, a classmate of mine had a flare for it, and he even did some projects with making huge mega massive stunning artistic displays with paint and thermocol, not sure what he is doing now, but back then those things looked quite impressive.
aptwebapps 1y ago
So close ... https://cdn.qwenlm.ai/output/wV1bg6891b9b1082439d7000d4397472f/t2i/e5daeea6-576c-488e-b3e5-031bdc3070f4/1754380865.png?key=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJyZXNvdXJjZV91c2VyX2lkIjoid1YxYmc2ODkxYjliMTA4MjQzOWQ3MDAwZDQzOTc0NzJmIiwicmVzb3VyY2VfaWQiOiIxNzU0MzgwODY1IiwicmVzb3VyY2VfY2hhdF9pZCI6IjczNDRjN2NjLWVhMjgtNGU4NC1iZTliLTNkZTdjZjNiYjhiMCJ9.fcdoZry0Ne6LsDPnP_9fPSmbbzzcUGrHLjMVR-5Hfz4 https://cdn.qwenlm.ai/output/wV1bg6891b9b1082439d7000d439747...

artur_makly 1y ago

Can someone now Vibe-code a web font-generation tool that converts these typographic gems into full embeddable web-fonts?

ethan_smith 1y ago
Fontself Maker for Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop or Glyphr Studio can convert vector drawings of these sign paintings into usable web fonts, though capturing their hand-painted nuances remains challenging.

shayonj 1y ago

This is v cool! thanks for sharing

asadm 1y ago

I am a noob, but is the Zohran Mamdani (new NYC mayor candidate)'s campaign also using this style of typeface for the logos etc. It looks similar.

lelandfe 1y ago
From a search it seems it was largely born from NYC bodega signage (which is ~every culture on the planet; my bodegas over the years have been Pakistani, Senegalese, Ghanaian, Haitian, Mexican...) but some Bollywood posters' influence (one article says he asked for it specifically, others that that's just an inspiration). So, yes.
knifie_spoonie 1y ago
Do you have any links that we can check out? I'm curious to see what they look like now.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
rmk 1y ago
It would not be surprising, because Mamdani's mother is Mira Nair, a renowned filmmaker (who is primarily makes movies for a western audience, but is heavily influenced by Bollywood).

manas96 1y ago

I've always observed a curious thing within India regarding the Devnagari (Hindi) and Latin (English) scripts. Essentially all English words are always written in Devnagari, but it's rarely the other way around. For example it is much more likely to see इंग्लिश टू हिंदी than "angrezi se hindi". My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.

OJFord 1y ago
I'm not sure if I don't understand, or completely disagree, but if you look anywhere 'digital' like Reddit for example, a lot of Hindi is written in Latin script. WhatsApp too in private communication, where people don't have or haven't understood how to use a devanagari (or transliterating) keyboard on their phone. As a Britisher learner it's frustrating¹ actually, because there is a standard for how to do this - IAST, for Sanskrit/derived generally - but of course that's not what native speakers use casually. E.g. your 'angrezi se hindi' would be 'añgrezī se hiñdī' but anyone writing Hindi with those accents is foreign or an academic. (Also people will casually write 'ay' instead of 'e' ए or 'ee' for 'ī' ई, etc. cf. 'paneer'.) [1: The frustration is because it leads to ambiguity, whereas IAST is 1:1 and so preserves the phonetic nature of devanāgarī, and tells me exactly which t/d/r sound, if it's aspirated, etc. which a fluent native layperson's anglicised interpretation really doesn't. They might write gora & gora and know from context if that's gora or ghoṛā, but if I don't already know the word a gora like me is stuck.]
- ashishb 1y ago
  Many foreign learners have written about it. Essentially, one can follow conventions around oneself or try to write and get an English spelling that sounds closest to Hindi pronunciation. And there are no academic rules around it that one is taught in schools in India. I learnt about IAST only after seeing how foreigners transcribe Sanskrit texts in Latin. See this amazing article by a Polish journalist https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/spell-it-out-should-english-transcription-of-indian-words-be-reformed/ https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/spell-it-out-should-english-...
- 1y ago

OJFord 1y ago

Tangential novel recommendation: A House for Mr Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)

pinoy420 1y ago

[dead]

desaiguddu 1y ago

Original Website: https://indiastreetlettering.com https://indiastreetlettering.com This website is put together by a friend who runs - https://3sided.co.in https://3sided.co.in

suchoudh 1y ago

Wow, it seems this newspost isolated all Hindi Speakers (mostly Indians !!! ) watching news.yc

underdog_hp 1y ago

[dead]