Rozha One Font

Rozha One is a high contrast Open Source typeface, which for the time being supports only the Devanagari and Latin scripts. Designed primarily for display it has an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes of the letters which make it ideal for large point sizes, large billboards, and posters. Rozha One was released by the Indian Type Foundry in 2014; Devanagari character for this font was designed by the designer named Tim Donaldson jointly with Jyotish Sonowal. Shiva Nallaperumal created the Latin.

Latin letters composing the font are thick and sturdy and are reminiscent of ‘modern’ or ‘Didone’ typefaces characteristic for Western advertising posters of the 19th century. Most of the Latin characters in Rozha One are nearly indistinguishable between lower and upper cases; the x-height of the lower case letters is very high and the size of the capital letters is very small – almost like the lower case letters – and hence they run into each other in a line of text.

However, the Devanagari letters are drawn in such a way that they complement the font’s Latin very well in environments where multiple texts in different languages coexist. The headline of the Devanagari base characters is of equal thickness to the Latin letters’ serifs. Some of the Devanagari letter strokes and vowel marks resemble the font’s Latin letters in terms of visual design. Nevertheless, Rozha One does not seem to look Latinized or un-Devanagari.