The Universal Thirst Gazette

Arumugam - Swadesi Telugu specimen


Founded in 1906 by T. Arumugam Mudaliar in Chintadripet, a locality in the city of Chennai (Madras at the time) in India, the Swadesi Type Foundry was a pioneer in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil types among 15 other scripts, supplying type to countries all over the world. Universal Thirst has a special connection with this foundry, having borrowed our name from this 1937 specimen. In it, the foundry director expressed his concern about the lack of well-designed font families, saying there was a “universal thirst” for high quality Indian and Latin typefaces that could be combined in a harmonious way. The specimen introduced the new Telugu series, which was named after the founder. It was revolutionarily designed with the point system ranging from 72 to 10 pt sizes. UT is currently in talks with the STF family to learn more about its history and the heritage of type.

archive india Telugu

Location

Chennai, India

Date

1937

Company

Swadesi Type Foundry

Scripts

Telugu, Latin

Printing Type

Hot metal produced from automatic machine cut originals

Format

Perfect bound book

Size

22cm x 14cm

Material

Paper

Pages

48
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