Skin to screen: Transforming the Indelible Markings of Baiga Tribal Tattoos into a Digital Typeface

Craft and language are a few activities common to humans across all geographies and time periods. Both are examples of human expression where codes and codification are used to communicate. There is a direct link between the evolution of language from images (such as cave paintings, pictograms, and tattoos)—to the alphabet. Language—whether the Mesopotamian Cuneiform (on clay) or the Gutenberg foundry (on metal)—always involved handwork as part of its construction and dissemination.

This connection is central to Typecraft which works with folk craft and tribal art—such as the adivasi (aboriginal) tribal tattoo—to make digital typefaces.

While language can be empowering to one group, it can also be exclusionary to another. The idea of reading is a sort of decoding while writing or inscribing can be thought of as coding. The transformation of one form of language—the tribal tattoo (godna)—encoded with meaning known only to a set of tribes—to a typeface—also encoded with significance for a larger audience. Although this gives a new form and meaning to the disappearing act of making permanent markings, it ends up also decontextualizing the tattoo from its original meaning and codifying it.

In the paper presentation, I will discuss the strategies being used to make the typeface a tool to educate outsiders about the tribal community while at the same time being a useful archive for the community themselves and what this means for the field of graphic design and typography.