Spirit W | Leo Burnett's Payal Juthani, who created Gandhiji's Fonts

Payal Juthani , Creative Director with Leo Burnett is a typographer . She along with her team created the Gandhiji’s Fonts to celebrate the life and work of the Mahatma. The letters of this devnagari font were constructed using Gandhiji’s iconic glasses. Thereby giving billions of Indians the opportunity to see the world through the Mahatma’s eyes. 

 

Payal Juthani , Creative Director of Leo Burnett has been with the company since the last three years. With a total of eleven years experience in the industry she came up on the unique idea of creating Gandhiji’s fonts using his iconic glasses. She spoke to Adgully on how she came upon this idea and made it a success. 

 

Ever since her association with Leo Burnett the most interesting work she has done since she came on board with them has been Gandhiji’s Fonts. The other interesting work she has done since the last three years is the packaging they have done for MacDonalds and Bajaj Irons. By nature a very methodical person, she admits that there is a craziness in her method. She starts her day out with a pre-lunch and post-lunch plan of how many things have to be done for the day.

 

When asked about how they came up on the  concept of Gandhiji’s fonts she recollects how the concept started over a cup of coffee with Mr. KV Sridhar of Leo Burnett who is also know as ‘Pops’. “It started with a very simple conversation  over a cup of coffee with Pops .It was close to Gandhiji’s birth anniversary and we were thinking of what we could do that would give a fitting tribute for him.” she said. Being a designer herself she confessed her love for typography and is very biased towards it. This led them to come upon the idea of creating the font based on Gandhiji’s glasses.

 

Payal goes on to say that “Gandhiji had a vision for his country and there were various and diverse opinions people had with regard to his views.” In her personal opinion she feels that it is amazing that he could achieve independence for the country without raising a single stick. This idea had to be carried forward and his vision had to be portrayed in a very artistic and visionary way.

She did not take very long to get going with this idea. Once she had talked it over with ‘Pops’ she got together with her small team of designers. They came up with a lot of sketches and brainstormed over it. This process did not take long. Creating the actual fonts in so many languages was a bigger task according to Payal. She says. “Indian languages are diverse and every language has a different set of characters so while your base mathras remain the same everything changes according to the script. So creating the gavit of scripts was more challenging.” On being asked how long they took to complete it, “We took little over a year to finish all the eleven languages. First it had to be designed then converted into fonts. They had to test out proper sentences which people read post which it went to a font creator who changed it from a vector file into a font file.” she said.

 

Among the different languages that they worked upon “Tamil is my favourite though I am Gujarati. The characters in Tamil turned out most interesting and hence became my favourite.” she says. She also got a feedback from people regarding this and the views on the font are as diverse as the views on Gandhiji but overall everyone was happy with the idea that they had come up with something very different.

 

Leo Burnett held an exhibition at Marine Drive in January 2011 on this concept and the response was overwhelming. People could not believe that anything like this was ever possible.

 

Leo Burnett won a gold at Adfest for a special edition book they had done for it. They also participated in the yearly session of talks that is held in Cannes where discussion on a subject has to be covered in forty five minutes. The topic of Gandhiji’s Fonts was presented as one of the case study of work done through them. Here too the response was very good and overwhelming.

Payal’s efforts have been duly rewarded. It was a proud moment for her and Leo Burnett when K.V. Sridhar presented the Gold Abby to XOX design in ‘Typography’ category at the Goafest 2012 recently.

 

When asked about the goals she has set for herself Payal says, “I have not given much thought about future goals for myself.  If I can everyday challenge myself  more and more, then I evaluate myself on the basis of looking at my portfolio as a designer and what has been my input in the last year.” She ventures into subjects that have not been covered before and that becomes a challenge for her. Her aspiration is to work with inspiring projects and designer agency Turner Duckworth is who she emulates as a standard for her.

 

As a creative person she feels that the Bindaas prospective needs working upon. She says, “The first step would be knowing the TG and getting completely into the psyche of the people.” She says that a brief comes either as a problem that has to be solved or if there is something new it has to be communicated. It completely depends where the brand is at the moment and accordingly the problem has to be tackled.

 

On the personal front Payal is a very friendly person but she prefers to retain diplomacy in all her relationships. Regarding travel the one place she would love to visit would be Egypt which has been her ambition.

 

As a creative person and designer she feels the need to edge the boundaries and make a mark for herself. She feels the need to break the mould and be more edgy. “I am a very straight forward person and I expect the same from others” she says.