Celebrating Tamil language and its typography, one syllable at a time

Hemalatha Venkatraman, a Chennai-bred artist settled in Ohio, America, has often been struck by the complexity and wonders of the Tamil language. “Take the word naanam for instance”, she begins. “I was listening to a song with the word naanam the other day with my cousin, and we were looking for an English equivalent for the letter. And we couldn’t figure it out.Some of the words in the English language are absolute, that Tamil has a mix of,” she smiles. She wanted to explore this very richness in the language through The Tamizh Type Project, where she celebrates the language through its typography.
Through her Instagram project, Hemalatha aims to give all the syllables in the Tamil language an artistic touch. Her Tamil roots were a huge inspiration behind the same, she admits. “I was born in Dindigul and brought up in Madras. Growing up in Tamil Nadu, you do not realise how much you are surrounded by that language. It is not out of the ordinary. You kind of grow up with the syllables,” notes Hemalatha, who moved to the US six years ago to pursue design research and development course.
The language is extremely complex, but we often do not realise that because it is our mother tongue, Hemalatha adds. And the onset of the pandemic last year made her dig a little deep into the language and its script. “I read close to 52 books about the same. I wanted to see what was out there for Tamil. The curves of the script are beautiful and unique,” she says.
While there are many resources for typography on the internet, including the 36 days of Type project, Hemalatha wanted to explore her mother tongue in a retro format.
“I was reading some of Jim Krause’s work and a few others and wanted to see what we had for our language. I also wanted to stick to my roots. You would find a lot of type work surrounding Bharatiyar and movie posters. But I wanted to do something from scratch on all the syllables we have. One of my main inspirations is the street and vehicle art that you find in Tamil Nadu. The lorry and street painters are amazing and do the art with such finesse and ease,” she says.
Hemalatha also wanted to explore a style that was different from what was already out there. “When you go online for typography work, you would find a lot of them that are what I call ‘manly’ Tamil. There is the obvious Tamil veriyan and Tamizhan da styles that you would see a lot. I was not necessarily interested in that. I wanted something that would be feminine with regards to the language. Tamil, in my head, is very feminine and it has so many beautiful curves in the script. I wanted to explore the curves of the language that accentuated the way we speak the language,” she explains.
She doesn’t stop with just the illustration of the syllable, but goes on to correlate every ezhuthu with a song and a film that features the letter, an idea which she attributes to her love for Tamil cinema and music. “Not all of my audience know how to read Tamil. So, I include a pronunciation guide as well. Each carousel takes about four to five hours, but I look at it as time well spent,” she beams.