Ishan Khosla

An Oasis of Type: Type Design of the People

About The Speaker

Ishan Khosla is a Delhi-based visual artist, designer and researcher with an MFA in Design from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He is a partner of The Typecraft Initiative and Associate Professor, UPES Dehradun. Having returned to India after living in the United States for over a decade, Ishan is interested in exploring various facets of the contemporary Indian milieu through
design. Whether it is to make a digital typeface from an ancient tribal art or an LED light for a primordial water ewer — he is interested in creating new juxtapositions in terms of material, time, function, and culture. Khosla’s work has been published in Typographic Universe, Found Type, India Contemporary Design: Fashion, Graphics, Interiors; Bi-scriptual — Multiple Script Typography; Tokyo Type Directors Club, New Graphic Design; Asian Graphics Now!; Stop, Think, Go Do; Kyoorius Design Awards and Kyoorius In-book.

Some of the venues Ishan has given talks include Typo Berlin, Kyoorius Design Yatra, Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, Semi-Permanent (New Zealand), The University of Edinburgh, College of Fine Arts, University of NSW (Sydney), Konstfack (Stockholm), and Aalto University (Helsinki) and as part of Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art.

An Oasis of Type: Type Design of the People

This presentation, via The Typecraft Initiative talks about the role of social design and designing with communities as an intrinsic process of design and its value and impact in a country such as India. I will also be looking at future applications that use the knowledge systems of the rural economy to use as Edtech apps for literacy and context-based learning.

Key Takeaways