Student Name:
Lana Papanyan
Project Title:
Tsaghikner
Description:
This thesis is a love letter to my first generation Armenian-American heritage. Armenian is the largest of two surviving languages that use the Armenian alphabet/writing system invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD. Due to historical and current threats of colonialism and genocide, the Armenian language has a fraction of the resources available to its speakers in comparison to other major written languages, including a lack of design related resources like typefaces. With less than 200 available Armenian typefaces, my geometric neo-blackletter typeface Tsaghikner (translating to flowers) seeks to solve this discrepancy by providing a modern, sleek blackletter option. The typeface’s name comes from my plan to expand this concept by incorporating illustrations of native Armenian flora in future iterations, hence creating even more possibilities for Armenian typefaces to be unconventional.
