The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023–2024
Ek Type's Nithya Ranjana carries Nepal's calligraphic script into Unicode — D&AD Yellow
An open-source typeface that puts the centuries-old Ranjana script on screens, preserving 750+ stacked conjuncts, matra forms and monogram letters in Unicode.
Ek Type
What it had to solve
Ranjana, a script that emerged in South Asia around the 8th–11th century, still writes Sanskrit, Pali and Nepal Bhasa for Buddhist and Hindu texts and for Newar culture. But its complexity and missing Unicode support left it almost nowhere on screens. Philanthropist Murali K. Prahalad commissioned Mumbai type foundry Ek Type to give it a contemporary digital form, with Nepal's Callijatra supplying the calligraphic expertise.
How it works
Ranjana is a calligraphic script that originated in South Asia between the 8th and 11th centuries and is used to write Sanskrit, Pali and Nepal Bhasa, mainly for Buddhist and Hindu texts and in Newar culture around Kathmandu. It has a deep heritage of manuscripts, stone inscriptions, wood engravings and paintings, yet its complexity and lack of Unicode support meant almost no digital representation — the script lived in books and on temple walls, not on screens.
Philanthropist Murali K. Prahalad commissioned Mumbai's Ek Type, a multi-script type foundry, to build a contemporary text typeface for Ranjana. Ek Type worked with Nepal's Callijatra, whose Ranjana script consultant Ananda K. Maharjan supplied the calligraphic knowledge, and designed the family in the script style used in Nepal today. The result, Nithya Ranjana, comes in two versions mapped onto Devanagari Unicode and Newa Unicode.
The engineering feat is contextual: Ranjana's stacked conjuncts and matra forms must recombine correctly in plain text. The font carries 750+ stacked conjuncts, character-specific matra forms, stylistic alternates, 40 Kutakshar monogram-style word marks and 600+ additional forms, and is free and open source, so the script can be typed, set and shared rather than traced by hand.
Why it lands
- A script without a Unicode font is locked out of every digital channel, no matter how beautiful its calligraphy.
- Building two Unicode versions (Devanagari and Newa) lets the same typeface serve Sanskrit, Pali and Nepal Bhasa texts.
- Releasing it free and open source removes cost and licensing as barriers for communities that need it most.
- The design brief treated living calligraphic behaviour, not just letterforms, as the thing to preserve.
What it did
Released in March 2024, the typeface let Sanskrit, Pali and Nepal Bhasa be set and typed properly for the first time, and won a D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil in Type Design & Lettering — headlined in Kathmandu as a historic first for Nepal — alongside a Type Directors Club 2024 award.
What you can take
Reviving a script means encoding its behaviour, not just drawing letters: keep conjuncts, matras and monograms working in Unicode so the writing system keeps its full complexity.
Since then
Nithya Ranjana won the D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil in Type Design & Lettering, an award ICT Frame in Kathmandu reported as a historic first D&AD Yellow Pencil for Nepal, and it also took a 2024 Type Directors Club award. D&AD's jury praised how the family makes a complex script feel both simple and deep. Because the font is open source and mapped to standard Unicode, it is available to any publisher, student or religious community wanting to set Sanskrit, Pali or Nepal Bhasa digitally — the kind of cultural infrastructure an endangered script needs to survive.
Sources
- Nithya Ranjana
- Nithya Ranjana Family
- Nithya Ranjana — TDC Winner 2024
- Nithya Ranjana Receives D&AD Yellow Pencil Award 2024: Historic Win for Nepal
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