The World of Calligraphy – Indian Scripts, Identity, & Celebration of World Calligraphy Day!

Calligraphy is an art of beautiful and hand-curated writing and is one of the oldest art forms. To mark the celebration of World Calligraphy Day at Lipikalpa 2026 , hosted by Parul University, the event brought together 3 masters at the Vadodara campus. Padma Shri Achyut Palav, Tarun Deep Giridhar from NID, and Dilbagh Singh, along with other guests, spoke about how calligraphy is very different from handwriting!

For Padma Shri Achyut Palav, founder of the Achyut Palav School of Calligraphy and one of India’s foremost calligraphers, the point was clear: handcrafted letterforms are a form of expression that digital typography cannot replicate. He explored how physical strokes can either add to generic visual noise or inspire something authentic and expressive, and how calligraphy connects to commercial branding, material experimentation, and multilingual script mastery. Interestingly, he spoke about converting literature, music, and sound into visual form so a written letter can carry the rhythm, vibe, and emotion.

Tarun Deep Giridhar, Principal Faculty in Graphic Design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, took calligraphy somewhere deeper, into questions of language and identity. His journey of learning Indian scripts one at a time, culminating in a project building a community around Gurmukhi type, revealed how a script is never just a set of shapes; it is a doorway into a culture, a sound, and a sense of self. He encouraged students to see letters simultaneously as shapes, sounds, and systems and spoke about carrying a mother tongue across borders. For him, learning a script opens a new world, and calligraphy becomes a way of documenting memory and telling the story of a people. His session reframed calligraphy as an act of cultural preservation as much as art.

Calligrapher, designer, and educator Dilbagh Singh brought the focus to process and curiosity. For him, the tool, a single brush, nib, or pen, is a starting point for endless exploration: change its angle, pressure, direction, or movement, and one stroke yields many possibilities. He treated the practice sheet as a place of discovery and encouraged students to experiment with whatever is around them, changing the paper, ink, or medium to open fresh creative directions. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in typography, lettering, illustration, and branding, he showed calligraphy as a living design practice rooted in observation and play, where traditional scripts and contemporary experimentation meet. If you’re equally passionate about India’s rich heritage of calligraphy and design, you can turn your passion into a full-fledged career. Explore creative programs at Parul University, such as Bachelor of Visual Arts in Applied Arts and B.Des in Communication Design to Master of Visual Arts in Art & Heritage Management to design a future of your own dreams!

At Lipikalpa 2026, the 3 masters discussed how calligraphy offers what other forms cannot. From authenticity to human presence, followed by cultural rootedness, the demand for a design skill across branding and communication plays a major role. Learning calligraphy opens up a unique technique with patience and fosters a deeper relationship with language. Hence, calligraphy remains a vibrant form of inspiration for modern designers!