Let me introduce The Hinglish Project by DDB Mundra Group in Mumbai, India. Their project recently won a gold prize at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012.
The Hinglish project utilizes a typeface that makes the Hindi text less intimidating for the estimated 5.7 million tourists that visit India every year. The statistic of 5.7 million was shockingly low to me as New York City alone is projecting almost ten times that at 51.5 million for 2012. The Incredible India folks may want to learn a thing or two from Mayor Bloomberg. Regardless, let me get back to this project. Through the use of typeface design, DDB Mundra Group states:
We created a typeface that would make Hindi less intimidating and more friendly.Through this unique fusion-font design, you can tell the phonetic sound of a Hindi character by looking at the corresponding English alphabet superimposed on it. While this font cannot teach you how to read words in Hindi, it demystifies individual letters.
With the Hinglish Project, Incredible India became the only tourism board in the world to help create a typeface for foreigners to familiarize themselves with native language. The website became popular with foreigners and locals alike.
If one goes to The Hinglish Project Website, they generously provide their font for FREE! They are also selling some products but sadly you have to email them for inquiries and cannot purchase directly. Time for DDB Mundra Group to get their e-commerce site up and running. One needs to eat and we hope that the Indian Ministry of Tourism paid them.
Something tells me that the Indian Ministry of Tourism made DDB Mundra Group use the slogan above which can be found in the postcard section of their site.
[via Random Specific + Cannes Lions Festival]
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