2020. Tilopā Project 6 — Saṃvaropadeśamukhakarṇaparamparācintāmaṇi (original) (raw)
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Dhives Akuru: The role of typography in cultural preservation
2023
Dives Akuru was a writing system used in the Maldives for at least twelve centuries and became extinct in the 20th century after being replaced by the current official script, Thaana. It has not been translated into typographic forms and only existed in manuscripts. It is an Indic script, like Sinhala, Tamil and Devanagari, but it has taken a distinct path in history. While these scripts were adapted to typography by the European colonisers, the Maldivian writing system was transformed by the influence of the Arabs. After its extinction, the preservation of the script’s history did not receive much attention from locals. Incidents of destruction of artefacts in the 20th century and the current rise in sea levels prove that its history is still in danger. However, the subject has attracted the interest of scholars, which helped to keep its history alive. This research aimed to contribute to the script preservation seeking for the role of typography in this process. It investigated how to translate the ancient script into typography while preserving its essential features. The final product is a typeface that is intended to be used in scientific publications as well as appropriated by the locals as a memory of their history. A classification of styles was developed to select models for the design phase. Once these were chosen, different processes were experimented with to translate the written forms into typography. The desired result was achieved by a method that maintained a closer relationship to manuscripts, rather than trying to create an ideal font that incorporated different styles. The method described in this research is related to a specific writing system, but the discussion presented may be relevant to other projects of scripts that do not have typographic forms.