is a graphic designer from India, and just like all his different names, his work spans across various categories like illustrations, branding, information design, publication design, typography & packaging.
Maa's Alpona
category:
Typography
Role:
Artist
Client:
Self
Year:
2024
36 Days of Type↗ is an annual and global online challenge that has essentially proved to be a 36 day celebration of type and creativity, involving designers, illustrators, type lovers and creatives from all around the globe. Each designer designs alphabets in their own style.
My custom typography series is inspired by my mother and her beautiful Alponas, a form of ritualistic floor art of Bengal traditionally drawn by the women of the household. I grew up watching my mother create these drawings during festivals and special occasions, a practice tied to ritual, care, and domestic space. This series emerges from that lived memory, translating a familiar, transient art form into a more contemporary typographic system.
It’s made using a special paste made from atop chaal (refined rice) mixed with water.
Tiny pieces of clean cloth or white cotton wool is held between the fingers and dipped in the paste and the pattern is drawn freehand.
Using their imagination, the artists draw a range of patterns, which may consist of a mix of hollow and solid geometric shapes, floral designs, paisleys, symbolic representation of animals and other objects, etc.
Rather than directly replicating traditional patterns, the project reinterprets their process & rhythm, allowing cultural inheritance to inform contemporary letterforms.
Each glyph is constructed using soft, rounded strokes that echo the pressure and movement of fingers gliding across the floor. Hollow and solid forms coexist, referencing the key visual elements of Alpona motifs: paisleys, floral elements, symbolic abstractions, and organic geometry.
The result is a set of letterforms that is rooted in tradition yet open to modern contexts.
As a Bengali, my relationship with Alpona is not only cultural but quiet personal.
