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ST Marma ProA typeface family for the Marma Writing System

www.tomsanalitro.co.ukSanalitro Type and Design

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ST Marma Pro

Intital development and experiments with the Marma writing system

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Test print of the 3 different Marma Pro weights

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ST Marma Pro is a 12 week development by Tom Sanalitro, of a 3 weight typeface family for the Marma writing system. It is aimed to be an improvement over his last ST Marma font by going beyond being just a one weight typeface where the letters are mono line based. Marma Pro takes into consideration the traditional form of the Marma letters by researching into the native users tools, materials and methods and then development into how these can be applied to the design of a typeface while maintaining typographic form and readability. The Marma writing system is an endangered alphabet used by the Marma people, They are found in a Region of southern Bangladesh called the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This upland and forested area is home to 13 different indigenous peoples, each of which has its own genetic identity, history and cultural traditions. Many have their own language and even their own script. All these languages and scripts are endangered. The Marmas, sometimes referred to as the Mogh, live mostly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They call themselves “Marma Lumya.” According to the Marma writer Kya Shai Pro, the word “Marma” is derived from the “Mryma” or “Mraima,” hinting at the Marma roots in Myanmar, or Burma. They are the second largest ethic group in Bangladesh. According to the National Census of 1991, Bangladesh has a Marma Population of 1,57,301. The Marmas are fair complexioned, with a nose that is slightly flat. They show similarities with the Burmese. The material culture of the Marma society includes many of the basic tools and weapons of primitive societies. According to the philologists, the Marma language belongs to the Burmese group of the Tibeto-Burman language family. The Marma alphabet, “Marmaza” or “Marimacha” originates from the ancient sub-continental Brahmi alphabet that had left-to-right writing style. It is

ST Marma Pro

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known that the people of Krishna and Godabar areas of south India migrated to several areas of southeast Burma in the sixth century. The Marma tongue, then, is a dialect descended from the Burmese language. Lewin has divided the whole of hill populations into two groups: one is “Khyoung tha” or “Khyoungsa” meaning “sons of a river” and the others “Toungtha” or “Toungsa” meaning “sons of a hill.” About their language, he says, “The Mugh (Marma) speak a provincial dialect of the Arakanese Language, which tongue was also parent stock of the modern Burmese language. The language has the strong affinities with the Himalayan and Tibetan dialects.”

*There are 45 letters in the Marma alphabet (33 consonants and 12 vowels), plus several alternative letters, 25 diacritic and punctuation marks, numerals 0-9 and glyphs that allow for stacked alphabet forms. The Marma script is an offshoot of the Burmese script, though there are several differences between the two, such as sound, and how some of the letters are used. The ST Marma Pro typeface currently comes in 3 weights containing all the above features.

*After some research I found several sources of Myanmar and Burma handwritten scripts. I decided the sources could be used for the development of my Marma typeface. The Sources showed a lot more flicks and curves than in all the previous examples I had found on the Marma script. These relied on the use of a geometric tool to create perfect lines and curves but the found scripts showed a real hand ons traditional approach that I wanted to incorporate into my new type designs. These sources allowed me to pick design features like having a minimal amount of straight lines, thick and thins and the stress. The important part now was to be able to add these features and a traditional look to the typeface while maintaining some form of typographical understanding and awareness to the design.

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First found source of handwritten myanmar

Folded-paper book or parabaik constructed in the traditional Myanmar manner found at princeton.edu

Myanmar script written using a brush and ink

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The above image is from John Okell’s Burmese: an induction to the script. It shows how the letters are formed and that they are often composed of two strokes and examples of where they start and end. I made the informed decision to work with this and have my letters stress points completely on the straight angle.

I tried to keep with the a completely straight angle while maintaining as many non-straight lines as I could throughout the typeface design but in some cases this was an impossible goal. I kept the terminals of the letterforms as narrow as possible but with a slight curve to give them a brush like effect to maintain some of the traditional hand written style but to a refined design point to try and keep a balance between the traditional script examples I found and a more typographic form spread over the typefaces 3 different weights.

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1) Terminal,2) Upper Diacritic,3) Stem,4) Punctuation marks,5) Cross Bars & Arms,6) Linked Letters,7) Counters,8) Lower Diacritic.

Marma Type Anatomy

ေချာင်းေကာက်မှာစကားေရရာ�ကိ�င်မည်�ှင့်။ဆဈပ်ဆိုးေရမှာကားလါးပညာချမ်ရေလို့တည်းရေမခိျုဘဲ။ချစ်တေလို့လည်းမကြောက်ဘဲမနေကဲ့။ခွေးပာာင်တိုင်းကိုလည်းကျေဝက်ခဲမြပစ်�ှိင်။လုအ�ကံပေးတိုလည်းမလိုက်�ိှုင်။လု၊ကိုလည်မယုံကဲ့ကိုလည်အ�ကေးမပေးကဲ့။

ေဆာင်းခါကွ�န်ေပးြဓ္မးမာေဝ့ာွသည်။ေန႔ခိါကဲွ၂ေပးြဗိတ်ဗှာေဝ့ဝွသည်။

In winter the idle slave will always be found in the ingle nook; in summer the missing buffalo

will be found in the mud pool.

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Marma Pro Light

က ခ ဂ ဃ င စ ဆ ဇ ဈ ဉ ည ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ တ ထ ဒ ဓ န ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ ယ ရ

လ ဝ သ ဟ ဠ အ ဢ ဥ ဧ

ဣ ဤ ဦ ဩ ဪ ၌ ၍ ၎ ၏ ၐ ၑ ၒ ၓ ၔ ၮ ၯ ၰ ၵ � � � � �

၀ ၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉

၊ ။ ါ ာ ိ ီ ု ူ ဲ ဴ ဵ ံ ့ း ် ျ ၪ ၫ ၬ ွ ြ � ႐ ႑ ႒ ႓ � � � � � � �

� � � � �

Standard Letters

Ligatures & Extra Characters

Figures 0—9

Diacritics, Punctuation, Marks and Accents

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Marma Pro Regular

က ခ ဂ ဃ င စ ဆ ဇ ဈ ဉ ည ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ တ ထ ဒ ဓ န ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ ယ ရ

လ ဝ သ ဟ ဠ အ ဢ ဥ ဧ

ဣ ဤ ဦ ဩ ဪ ၌ ၍ ၎ ၏ ၐ ၑ ၒ ၓ ၔ ၮ ၯ ၰ ၵ � � � � �

၀ ၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉

၊ ။ ါ ာ ိ ီ ု ူ ဲ ဴ ဵ ံ ့ း ် ျ ၪ ၫ ၬ ွ ြ � ႐ ႑ ႒ ႓ � � � � � � �

� � � � �

Standard Letters

Ligatures & Extra Characters

Figures 0—9

Diacritics, Punctuation, Marks and Accents

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Marma Pro Bold

ကခဂဃငစဆဇဈဉညဋဌဍဎဏတထဒဓနပဖဗဘမယရ

လဝသဟဠအဢဥဧ

ဣဤဦဩဪ၌၍၎၏ၐၑၒၓၔၮၯၰၵ�����

၀၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉

၊။ါာိီုူဲဴဵံ့း်ျၪၫၬွြ�ှ႑႒႓�������

�����

Standard Letters

Ligatures & Extra Characters

Figures 0—9

Diacritics, Punctuation, Marks and Accents

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မေတ္တာြပ

င့်�ိုးထ

၍ေန႔သစ်က

ိုစတင်ပါ

Wak

e up

and

star

t a n

ew d

ay w

ith lo

ving

kind

ness

လု၊က

ိုလည်မယ

ုံကဲ့ကိုလည်အ�က

ေးမပ

ေးကဲ့။

Give

nei

ther

trus

t nor

cred

it.

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Further InformationFor any further information please look up any of the following

sites and contracts.

tomsanalitro.co.ukendangeredalphabets.com

timbrookesinc.com mothertonguebooks.org

uni.hilledu.com scriptsource.org

Sanalitro Type and Design.

ST Marma Pro Typeface Specimen Booklet, Text and illustrations copyright © Tom Sanalitro 2014

Specimen booklet and poster designed by Tom Sanalitro using Adobe Indesign CC, Apple imac and Endglish text sent in Skolar.

Printed in the UK .

www.tomsanalitro.co.uk

ST Marma Pro is a copyright of Tom Sanalitro.All rights reserved: no part of this book may be reproduced

in any form, by print, photocopy, or any other means without written permission from the publisher.

EST. 2013

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