Pria Ravichandran

Pria Ravichandran is a type designer and researcher whose work bridges traditional Indian scripts with contemporary global typography. She holds both an MA and a PhD in Typeface Design from the University of Reading, where her doctoral research focused on developing typographic forms for the Kannada and Telugu scripts. Before co-founding Foundry 5 in 2021, she served as Chief Design Officer at URW Typefoundry.

Her widely used typefaces include Palanquin, a versatile superfamily available through Google Fonts with tens of thousands of downloads worldwide, and Catamaran, designed for Tamil and Latin. She has also contributed to system-level designs such as Neue Frutiger Tamil. At Foundry 5, she co-designed the expansive Peridot superfamily, comprising more than 120 styles across Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic. Peridot PE received the Award of Excellence in the Communication Arts Typography Competition (2024).

Pria’s work reflects a commitment to typographic diversity and accessibility across scripts, blending deep academic research with practical design innovation. She delivered the Justin Howes Memorial Lecture in 2021 and has published scholarly articles in Publishing History (No. 87, 2023) and the Journal of the Printing Historical Society (Third Series, Vol. 6, 2026).