Tracing Aksara: Documenting and Digitizing the Typography of Indonesia’s Traditional Scripts

By Puteri Annisa and Tsamrotul Fuadah

"This proposal is based on the student's independent study in Spring 2026, which explores the preservation, amplification, and recontextualization of Indigenous languages across Indonesia. Through two interconnected projects, the work is grounded in research and culminates in a book as its primary form. The publication is anchored by a custom typeface inspired by the preservation of the student's mother tongue (Sundanese).

Indonesia is an archipelago comprising over 700 indigenous languages. Although the Latin alphabet serves as the de facto writing system for Bahasa Indonesia and many local languages, each language originally possessed its own script. The use of these local scripts has declined due to the widespread adoption of the Latin alphabet and various sociopolitical factors. During the mid-1900s, nationalism, the war of independence, and the establishment of early governance in Indonesia led to the adoption of the Latin script as a neutral, practical writing system. As a result, traditional scripts have been largely replaced by the Latin alphabet (Perdana, 2021). However, several scripts, such as Balinese, Batak, Buginese (Lontaraq), Javanese, Makassar, Rejang, and standardized Sundanese, are now encoded in the Unicode standard (Unicode Consortium, 2020).

A dedicated group of educators, designers, illustrators, cultural workers, and artists has developed various practices to preserve indigenous scripts. Beyond individual efforts, a broader conversation around indigenous type design has begun to emerge across design communities in Indonesia. For example, designer Aditya Bayu Perdana has conducted multiple experiments in local typeface design. Notably, he collaborated with Google to develop Noto Sans Javanese.

This Independent Study is motivated by the limited exploration of local typography in Indonesia and the urgent need to preserve these scripts. The study comprises two main projects: experimentation with local typeface design and documentation of the history and contemporary practice of Indonesian indigenous scripts. In doing so, this study draws on the methodology of Latin typography and typeface design to develop an exploratory framework for designing indigenous typefaces for digital use.

This study aims to develop both cultural and practical knowledge of Indonesian indigenous scripts from a typographic perspective. The methodology begins with desk research, which will be documented in the form of a book and a typeface design. Interviews have been conducted with four practitioners experienced in traditional script typeface design from Indonesia, whose backgrounds range from academics to professional type designers. These interviews are processed using a qualitative method to understand each practitioner's approach to type design, spanning manuscript research, writing practice, and language study prior to digital type design.

The study also examines how traditional techniques of script production are integrated with new digital technologies, focusing on how the distinctive characteristics of these scripts are preserved and adapted in digital typeface development.

Advisor: Asad Pervaiz (apervaiz@pratt.edu)

Sample work of traditional scripts typeface:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/79499543/Javanese-font-Noto-Sans-Javanese"