On June 2nd and 3rd, 2023, the Kolkata-based École Intuit Lab, which was established in partnership with the Techno India Group, a pioneer in education in Eastern India, presented its yearly exhibition, the Kolkata Design Fest. The Design Fest gave students a stage on which to present their best work to professionals from around the world who had been invited as part of the event’s fundamental mission to bring the best and most innovative in art, design, and creativity back to Kolkata. Thus, Design Fest turns into a gathering place for students, mentors, and influential figures to exchange knowledge and ideas.

Every year, a theme is selected to represent Design Fest. The topic for 2023 was typography. Although it is a constant in printed layout, typography has long been the unsung hero of the design world. It has been in use ever since the printing press was created.  However, good type still frequently goes undetected and unacknowledged in modern society.

There were various rooms for The Kolkata Design Fest where fascinating events were held. Lab 1 was tasked with highlighting the ‘type’ development process. Students investigated “type” the way it was created at its most basic level, using hand drawings and custom designs akin to those of an ancient scribe. The main location for the next major innovation, woodblock printing, was Lab 2. Lab 3 portrayed the revolutionary Renaissance age, which is essentially a post-printing press, to illustrate the critical role in the development of art and design.

The post-graduate students, who were in the latter stages of their design school, researched the digital world and depicted the most recent period in the history of type. Through the use of many scripts and languages, each lab explored various languages and scripts.

The languages being explored are the following- Cyrillic, Indian, Oriental, and Latin.

Every room has displays showing animation and AR posters with Kinetic Typography in several languages.

A room specifically designated to display hackathon work was present during the Kolkata Design Fest.

Priyanka Dutta