Kola

The Tulu script has existed largely in manuscripts, palm leaves, and scholarly archives invisible to public life, absent from popular visual culture, and unknown to most people outside the region.It was the written soul of the Tulu language spoken in the coastal Karnataka and Kerala region. By rendering it in this expressive, display-oriented style, I am doing something that goes beyond type design. I am pulling a near-extinct script out of the archive and placing it in the present.
Making it feel alive. Making it feel celebratory. Making it feel worthy of pride for a community whose written identity has long been overlooked, quietly displaced by dominant scripts and the pressures of print standardisation. The rounded, bubbly weight of the letterforms is also a deliberate cultural choice. It draws a quiet visual connection to Malayalam calligraphy Tigalari's closest living relative acknowledging that this script did not simply die. It transformed. It survived in another form.
This design says: the Tulu script deserves to be seen. It deserves to be celebrated. And it deserves a future not just a past.