Komi Serif

/ 2017 –


Komi Serif is a typographic research and type design project for a creation of a new typeface for komi language.

This project is done in collaboration with type designer Teo Tuominen.

Komi languages went through a series of orthographic changes in early 1900's. The research will focus on the decades when komi was written in latin alphabet. They employed a number of special characters that have since gone extinct. Because komi is now written in cyrillics the unicode system is missing these characters making it impossible for reserachers to use OCR techonology and access materials in a editable digital form. The resulting typeface is answering to this dilemma by featuring both latin and cyrillics with special komi characters, making digitization of publications possible from 1920-1930's.

Project partners: National Library of Finland Fenno-Ugrica Archives, University of Helsinki Department of Modern Languages Language Technology, FU-lab (Syktykvar, Komi, Russia).

Supported by Kone Foundation and Grafia ry