Leading from the font

Their 'M' in 1948 was a bit Roman but it survived just a decade. In 1958 the M,A,N,N,E,Y and also S of Manney's Booksellers underwent a cosmetic surgery.

With over a thousand fonts reining the world of typography,the ones that still stand tall in the city are over seven decades old,designed not by professionals but owners of the shops

Their ‘M’ in 1948 was a bit Roman but it survived just a decade. In 1958 the M,A,N,N,E,Y and also S of Manney’s Booksellers underwent a cosmetic surgery. V G Mani wanted his personal stamp on Manney’s signboard. And so came into existence the font that shop has been using since 1958. The board however did change once in 1988 due to the shift in location of the shop but the font remained the same. So the 21-year-old board today flaunts a 51-year-old font that has been there and seen it all. Or as Manik Mani,the present proprietor,Manney’s Booksellers puts it,”The font is the face of the shop. My father wanted to get rid of the usual fonts so he designed this in order to get something very novel.” The font style could not register itself in the official font list of professional signboard artistes as it follows a style of its own.

Just beside Manney’s,another font from the old school intrigues many. Staring at every soul passing by,the font retains its status of being one of the most prominent features of the busy road. Frequent strollers have the same story to tell. Satish Pethekar an employee of an advertising agency at Camp noticed the board the very first time he entered the lane. “Manney’s and West End,they will be there looking at you,dwarfing your existence not because of their size but a certain boldness and a certain air of antiquity about them.”

Royal Bakery recently shifted its 70-year-old signboard to the backside of the shop. Had it not been for the law of putting up a Marathi signboard for the shop we wouldn’t have removed that board as it was in a perfect condition,” says R S Irani,one of the partners of Royal Bakery. A young kid when the old board was made,Irani recollects the time the signboard was made. “I was young that time and the bakery was small. We had business on a small scale so we could not hire professional artistes. Our predecessors painted it themselves. They tried to copy the standard font that was very famous. Royal Bakery was written on it in block capital letters,” reminisces Irani.

The 100-year-old Poona Drug Store at camp has the same story to tell. The story of its signboard dates back to the year when the small shop of toiletries transformed into a full-fledged medicine shop. Some 70 years back when the shop stepped into the medicine business,we changed the board and it was there till now unless we changed it to Pune Drug Store recently. Even when we changed,we maintained the simple style we had earlier, says R Raymond,properitor

Ranjana Daini,professor,Graphic Designing at MIT institute of Design describes the process of creating unofficial fonts as the initial steps of logo designing. All these shops dont have elaborate logos. It is just their names stated in some fonts. But very few people are aware that none of these fonts can actually be called fonts. Its just a type. A font will be standarised from A to Z to even symbols like plus and minus and a question mark. This does not happen with the fonts of these shops. The Royal Bakery also has been written without proper measurements or a very precise and uniform style and also it does not have a T or M or other letters,so you can never call the whole set up a font, says she.

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