We are reviving Gandhi again, but not as nostalgia for his ways and vision this time. Ad agency Leo Burnett has launched a Gandhi font that’s available for free download from the midnight of October 1-2.
The font has been designed taking inspiration from Gandhi’s round-rimmed metal frames. For those who care about the fonts they use, the new Gandhi typeface will offer users a chance to identify with the vision of the man. In short, the choice of font can become your political statement.
Anyone who has seen Helvetica, a documentary about the typeface Helvetica, will appreciate how fonts become cultural mirrors, and can dominate entire visual cultures and values. They can slip into every part of our lives through T-shirt designs, bags, signage, posters, web pages and so on. In some ways, fonts shape us, too.
The moot point is whether we in India will have much use for it: with our venality and corruption, we should start using it only when we come a bit closer to the Father of the Nation’s standards of truth and morality. Transparency International ranks India 84th on the Corruption Index. That makes 83 other countries better entitled to use the Gandhi font.
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