Papua New Guineans will soon have the opportunity to use locally designed fonts or type-faces that come in a software package.
The new product designed and developed using cultural themes of Papua New Guinea by the Arts & Design Strand of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) will be officially launched on the 11th of September at the university’s Ulli Beier Building.
The product called Kumul Fonts (KF), formerly Fantasy Fonts (FF), was developed as a project initiated by the Strand to promote Papua New Guinea culture through the modernisation of cultural themes and distribute worldwide.
Kumul Fonts that comes in alphabet (letters), numeric (numbers) and symbols form is designed with the aim to promote PNG art through modern technology, promoting innovation and creativity in art through the use of cultural themes that will help sustain the dying cultures.
Founder of the project and lecturer in Art and Design, Philemon Yalamu, who designed and developed the fonts, said that the art work was created by using different cultural backgrounds of his students.
Students were directly involved and tasked to provide primary designs from their places of origin to form each different character set.
“I am a person who likes to use things out of my own invention or creativity. I do not like to use things that other people create,” he said.
“I was motivated by my children, aged 12 and 10, who are of this computer generation, very smart in computing. The older child is very skilful in programming and the younger one is living with a disability. Despite his lack of ability to move around by himself, he uses his feet to do amazing things on his computer that adults do, especially in computing. They both are very smart in computing, and that is what motivated me to come up with new ideas, something original” said Yalamu.
The official launch of the product will be sponsored by the UPNG Bookshop that will be the main publisher and promoter of this digital publication.
UPNG Bookshop managing director Dr John Evans acknowledged that the product that will now go on the market is the first of its kind in the industry.
“This is something new for the university, especially for an academic to invent something that the university itself will publish for the public’s use,” said Dr Evans.
Meanwhile, students from various disciplines registered under courses Events Management ( Theatre Arts Section) and Electronic Media (Journalism Strand) are working around the clock to ensure the launch is successfully staged. The students are doing this as part of their practical coursework assessment.
Mr Yalamu while acknowledging the involvement of students in preparing for the launch said he would like to see more of these kinds of student engagements from all disciplines in the university.