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This article looks at PuLa100, a custom handwritten font inspired by the writing of legendary Marathi author Purushottam Laxman Deshpande. It focuses on how typography artist Kimya Gandhi studied and digitised his handwriting to create a typeface that captures the personality, rhythm and quirks of his script. The piece highlights the project as both a design exercise and a cultural tribute, showing how the font translates literary legacy into a contemporary visual form while reconnecting younger audiences with Marathi literature.
A new font based On Pu. La. Deshpande’s handwriting is making the rounds in the realm of typography. For those of you who don’t know, PuLa100 is a custom handwritten font celebrating the legendary Marathi writer Pu. La. Deshpande.
If you google the name Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, (popularly known by his initials Pu. La.) the information you source says he was a writer and humorist from Maharashtra. However, this doesn’t suffice his incomparable contribution to capture the phenomenon that was Pu. La. to Marathi literature.
Kimya Gandhi, a typography artist and illustrator hailed to be the mastermind behind the PuLa100 font grew up in a house where my mother, a Hindi & Marathi teacher was an avid reader. With an impactful childhood spent reading Marathi books like Vyakti and Valli peened by PuLa, the artist found herself deeply fascinated by the stories of the Maharastrian writing whizz. Over the years she grew up watching many of his performances & plays and his writing still remains relatable and contemporary for the artist personally. Talking about the design process, the illustrator dishes it all-
The process was similar to previous handwritten fonts I have created before for Maku and Sharad76. I studied samples of PuLa’s handwriting, that were acquired by Be Birbal from procured from Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune. It was truly a fascinating and memorable experience to read his words in his own handwriting. I reviewed the texts to understand his letterform style in detail. Then selected individual characters were later traced and eventually converted into a digital font.
— Kimya Gandhi
Check out her work here.
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