Welcome to our Home!!

The Rachana Institute of Typogaphy (RIT) is a non-profit organization that exists for two reasons:
  1. to make available good quality Unicode fonts in Malayalam and other Indic scripts under Open Font License so that the fonts can be freely downloaded and used without any restrictions by the user community.
  2. to provide commercial support if required by an organization that want to use these free fonts for their commercial production.
A series of fonts — both ornamental and textual — are proposed to be released in a timely fashion and the first in this series, viz., RIT Sundar has been released on February 5, 2018 at River Valley Campus, Malayinkeezh, Trivandrum.

Shaping issues in InDesign

Finally, Adobe has integrated HarfBuzz shaping engine (the libre software that correctly shapes many writing systems in GNU/Linux, Firefox, Chrome, XeTEX, LuaTEX, LibreOffice, Android, etc.) in their products. Instead of Adobe’s buggy ‘world ready composer’, it is possible to use HarfBuzz and get Malayalam properly shaped in InDesign etc.

To enable HarfBuzz in InDesign, follow these instructions.

Specimen pages

Please visit this site to see the new font, RIT Rachana, in action in both PDFs and web pages.

Please click the Samples tab for font samples and posters.

News

  1. April 15, 2025: Open Font Design Competition 2026 announced.
  2. April 10, 2025: The report of the results of the Open Font Design Competition 2025 published.
  3. March 26, 2025: The results of the font competition have been announced, the winners being:
    • •irst: Karambir Singh Rohilla (Delhi): RIT Thaara
    • •econd: Rahul Radhakrishnan (Kottayam): RIT Lekha
    • •hird: Krishnakumar PV (Ernakulam): RIT Lasya
    More details are available here.
  4. May 6, 2024: Rachana Institute of Typogaphy, KaChaTaThaPa Foundation, and Sayahna Foundation together have announced “Open Font Design Competition 2025”. For timelines, regulations, prizes and more details, see brouchure in English or Malayalam.
  5. January 8, 2024: RIT Chingam released: A new libre Malayalam traditional script font, RIT Chingam (named after the first month of Malayalam calendar) is the newest libre font released in the year of 2024. The typeface is designed by Narayana Bhattathiri. Please click here to see the poster and samples.
  6. August 17, 2022: RIT Karuna released: A new libre Malayalam traditional script display typeface, RIT Karuna, inspired by the style of late acclaimed painter, illustrator & art director C.N. Karunakaran. The typeface is designed by Narayana Bhattathiri. Please click here to see the poster and samples.
  7. October 2, 2019: A new font, RIT TN Joy, was released as a tribute to the late social activist and revolutionary, TN Joy at Trichur. His first death anniversary fell on this day.