“My love for the Tamil language and culture stemmed from my dad who was a voracious reader by choice. On every trip- business or personal, he would ensure to collect books, to the extent that we had a mini-library, right in our home!

But within this world what got me most excited were the unique book covers! You see, the 60s and 70s had published pieces where the covers themselves conveyed an entire story, thereby making sure to pull-in readers automatically, in the process!

However, as a creative child, I started missing the same level of enthusiasm when digitalization came into effect. Especially with the vernacular novels then, there were hardly any design elements developed and it made most of the literary work seem templatized. So as a student with an eye for both computers and designing, I decided to break the monotony by slowly exploring the arena of Tamil typography.

Of course, a large portion of it seemed amateur initially and were inspired from the doodles in my rough notes. Nevertheless, I’m so glad I still went with it, for it has laid the foundation to my entire career today. I’m a lettering artist, currently doing my bit to provide richer, more expressive Tamil fonts for better visual appeal and emotional connect amongst onlookers.

And what a journey it’s been! I began professionally in 2013 taking bold yet baby steps in a rather unexplored niche but it has definitely paid off manifolds! People’s encouragement was immense right from day one and it peaked to an all new level when music director A R Rahman first shared my artwork. It was his birthday and having a legend like him repost my design indeed proved to be a huge boost!

But my proudest memory till date has to be when Google approached me to create a font for them and I, in turn, developed “Kavivanar”, inspired from my dad’s handwriting. He was my biggest role model and having named a significant piece of work after him is truly a memory I’d hold close to my heart forever!

Now, besides my learnings, what I look for is inspiring others from the position of a teacher. People often ask me for many, many tips and techniques and I’m more than happy to always share everything I’ve learnt. In the end, the world is dynamic and I would love to nurture a community of creative individuals who’d be all for experimenting and taking this art forward!”