Monotype Announces Vaishnavi Murthy Yerkadithaya as First Creative Type Director for the Indic Market

NOIDA, India, May 13, 2024 — Monotype Imaging Inc., a global leader in type and technology, is thrilled to announce the appointment of Vaishnavi Murthy Yerkadithaya as the company’s first Creative Type Director for the Indic market.

This marks a significant milestone in Monotype’s commitment to enhancing and diversifying its typographic offerings and services to better serve the dynamic and culturally rich Indic market with over 1,500 languages and dialects.

Monotype offers a range of services to Indian and global brands and agencies, including custom font design, font licensing, and type consulting. The company also supports the development and promotion of Indic scripts and languages, working closely with partner foundries and designers.

Tom Rickner, Senior Director of Monotype Studio, said, “I am thrilled to welcome Vaishnavi as our newest member of Monotype’s global Studio. Her wealth of talent and expertise will be crucial in guiding Monotype’s expanded support of Indian script systems to meet the needs of our growing Indian market, as well as our global Enterprise customers.”

With over 18 years of design and research experience, Vaishnavi specializes in type design. She completed her undergraduate studies at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and earned an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, UK with a Felix Scholarship.

Based in India, Vaishnavi Murthy Yerkadithaya brings an impressive background in type design and a deep understanding of the cultural nuances that influence typography in India. Her expertise will be instrumental in driving innovation and excellence in type design tailored for the Indic languages, which are integral to the communication needs of the region.

“Both my grandfather’s expertise in ancient scripts and the immense diversity of India’s linguistic landscape have had a profound impact on my work,” Vaishnavi said. “My aim is to merge tradition with digital innovation, making modern and ancient scripts more accessible. Digital platforms are moving to become more global and inclusive, and it is essential that we actively work to create well-crafted multi-script fonts to ensure all users have a smooth experience.”

Vaishnavi’s work involves researching various old and new Indic scripts, as well as standardization, encoding, and type design. In 2003, she initiated research on the then-forgotten Tulu-Tigalari script, using today’s advanced font technology to standardize the script and make it accessible digitally and in print for the first time. She also collaborated with Vinodh Rajan to have the Tulu-Tigalari script encoded in Unicode 16.

Quadrilingual in English, Kannada, Hindi, and Tulu, Vaishnavi has an abundance of knowledge about various Indic script systems, with a particular interest in South Indian and Southeast Asian Grantha-based scripts. Vaishnavi has worked with other foundries and individual type designers around the globe to design contemporary fonts in Kannada, Telugu, Devanagari, and Malayalam scripts. As part of the team at Monotype, she aims to boost primary language adoption in India’s diverse linguistic landscape through Indic font work.

Neeraj Gulati, Managing Director for Monotype Solutions India, and SVP, Chief AI Officer said, “The written word is a cornerstone of human creativity and experience. It is core to the voice of every brand. India has a rich tapestry and heritage of languages and scripts. We look forward to Vaishnavi’s contribution in preserving and enriching this heritage across Indic languages and in enabling local and global brands to develop their unique voice in the market that resonates with their audience.” 

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