MINISTRY OF TOURISM GOVT. OF INDIA | THE HINGLISH PROJECT | 2012
When letters blend together, countries blend together too / MINISTRY OF TOURISM GOVT. OF INDIA "THE HINGLISH PROJECT"
In India, mixing Hindi and English together into "Hinglish" is just a normal part of how people talk. So someone decided to turn that into a font.
The problem
Over 5.7 million tourists visit India every year, but the streets are covered in signs written in Hindi. For anyone who can't read the Devanagari script, that's less of an adventure and more of a guarantee you'll get lost.
The idea
They developed a font that fuses Hindi's Devanagari characters with the Roman alphabet, matching them up based on shared sounds. Just by looking at the letters, you can tell how to pronounce them. They made it available as a free download, aiming to make India feel a little more approachable.
What happened
The project won a Gold Lion at Cannes Lions in 2012. It also expanded into merchandise like T-shirts, mugs, and handbooks, and was even exhibited at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan.
Afterthought
Lowering the walls between cultures just a little, through the design of letters—that feels like genuinely honest work for an ad to do. I like to imagine it gave tourists a reason to think "India looks kind of fun," instead of just "India looks hard."
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2012
Featured in
- The People Who Invented Words That Didn't ExistFive projects that had to design a notation system before they could write a single line of copy.
