Malayalam Fonts

By karmadude on Nov 23, 2008 | 19 Comments

When it comes to Malayalam fonts for web designers, there seems to be a lack of quality Malayalam fonts. However, if you observe Malayalam print and more traditional media, there are some very cool fonts being used in movie posters, news papers, magazines, and advertising.

While doing a little searching for Malayalam fonts, I came across—”My Experiments with Type”—a presentation made at Typography Day 2008 IDC IIT Bombay in March 2008, by Malayalam font designer, Hashim P M, who currently is the Chief Designer at Desgin Difference Cochin.

Coming from an Engineering background, Design was like liberation for me. The joy of creation is overwhelming. And I fell in love with… type! I found that those little specks of black can make a very big impact. Photography, Printing, Publication Design, Graphics… Design gave me a whole new world. I have been enjoying every moment ever since.

Here are some of Hashim’s fonts from his presentation:

Vartha

Designed for Malayala Manorama as a student project at IDC

Indulekha

The most popular Malayalam Font, making it the Helvetica of Malayalam fonts.

Revivarma

First Calligraphic typeface in Malayalam

Ambili

First Malayalam serif font

Chihnangal

Symbols Typeface

Kingini

Designed when he worked for Malayala Manorama

Puthuma

Ambadi

Font used in the redesigned Mathrubhumi Weekly headlines

For more of Hashim’s Malayalam fonts check out his IDC presentation.

Other Malayalam font resources

IFSCO Malayalam Font Catalog

McGill University School of Computer Sc. List of Malayalam fonts.

There are a lot of beautiful Malayalam and other Indic fonts out there, but good online resources for purchasing these fonts are lacking. I hope designers like Hashim will soon start to make some of their beautiful fonts available for web designers.

19 Comments

:: add your comment

by Understanding Design & Computers: Malayalam Fonts Review
on Nov 24, 2008 at 2:40 am | Link

[...] Ormmakal has a great summary of Malayalam fonts and links to Luc’s wonderful site’s page on ML fonts. I’d love to go visit the Design Difference foundry when I head down to Kerala next year. The Malayalam Fonts Review by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. November 24, 2008 | Filed Under Personal Thoughts [...]

by Techii
on Jan 19, 2009 at 11:53 pm | Link

Nice collection and information

by askar
on Mar 16, 2009 at 4:48 am | Link

hello, where can i download those fonts, i really luv the type faces, if u could send me those fonts to my mail.. ill be more than happy… im lookin for font types like action GENRE< in malyalam font

by getanswers
on Mar 22, 2009 at 1:15 am | Link

well that fonts look great..great post..informative..keep writing..

by Muneef
on Apr 8, 2009 at 6:09 am | Link

Nice collection…

by Shajahan Baqavi Nettoor
on May 23, 2009 at 9:03 pm | Link

Best settings

by ABDULLAH
on Jun 24, 2009 at 3:58 am | Link

how can i get these malayalam fonts……

by abdul azeez
on Jun 26, 2009 at 2:00 am | Link

Hi,
How can download these fonts.

by sony johny
on Jul 10, 2009 at 10:35 pm | Link

I like it very much. nice collection, really nice, I request you, if u can please send it to my mail.

by prasanth
on Jul 12, 2009 at 12:39 am | Link

Hai, I want to download indulekha font, how is it possible?

by prasanth
on Jul 12, 2009 at 12:40 am | Link

How can I download Indulekha font?

by Indian Classifieds
on Jul 22, 2009 at 10:13 pm | Link

You got your nice collection..Tahnks a lot for share with us but I got a question? How I get it or I can say How can I download it? I mean How they going to support me whenever I am gonna write on MS-word? do you have any idea?
plz help me out