Just the all of us — how we developed our first Odia font family, the collaborative way

Many typeface designers have the opportunity at some point to get out of the cave and open their eyes to a project outside of their comfort zone, outside of their daily design routine. That is where we found ourselves when we accepted a proposal to develop a font for the Odia script, a writing system in which we are not native. From the beginning, we understood that collaboration would be our best strategy to face this challenge; designing and producing a typeface in a writing system we do not know nor understand. The collaborative experience was extremely enriching and gave us a different perspective on our practice. However, we also encountered some limitations during that process. Our talk will shine a light on collaborative processes. We will present our typeface, Noto Sans Odia, through the prism of exchanges we had during the making of the project: communication between the designers, teamwork with the consultants, discussion with the software makers (Glyphs), etc. The collaboration between us all is what made the project possible.