Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam is an Indian academic and designer noted for his design of the

Indian rupee sign The Indian rupee sign (₹) is the currency symbol for the Indian rupee ( ISO 4217: INR), the official currency of India. Designed by D. Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010, following its sele ...

. His design was selected from among five short listed symbols. According to Kumar, the design is based on the

Indian tricolour The national flag of India, colloquially called the tricolour, is a horizontal rectangular tricolour flag of India saffron, white and India green; with the ', a 24-spoke wheel, in navy blue at its centre. It was adopted in its present form d ...

. , he is the Head of the Department of Design at

IIT Guwahati The Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT Guwahati) is a public technical university established by the Government of India, located in Amingaon area, North Guwahati city, in the state of Assam in India. It is the sixth Indian Inst ...

, Assam.

Personal life

Kumar is the son of N. Dharmalingam, a former DMK

member of the legislative assembly A member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected by the voters of a constituency to a legislative assembly. Most often, the term refers to a subnational assembly such as that of a state, province, or territory of a country. S ...

of the state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...

Academics

Kumar attended La Chatelaine Junior College in

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of ...

. He obtained a bachelor's degree in architecture (

B.Arch The Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) is a bachelor's degree designed to satisfy the academic requirement of practising architecture around the world. Australia Architectural education in Australia varies depending on the university offering th ...

) from the School of Architecture and Planning (SAP) at

Anna University Anna University is a public state university located in Tamil Nadu, India. The main campus is in Chennai. It was originally established on 4 September 1978 and was named after C. N. Annadurai, the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. His ...

, Chennai in 2001. Subsequently he received his master's degree, an

MDes A Master of Design (MDes, M.Des. or M.Design) is a postgraduate academic master degree in the field of Design awarded by several academic institutions around the world. The degree level has different equivalencies; some MDes are equivalent to Master ...

in Visual Communication, from the

Industrial Design Centre The IIT Bombay Industrial Design Centre School of Design (IITB IDC School of Design) is a design school part of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, a public research university in Powai, Mumbai. It offers four-year Bachelor of Design (B. ...

(IDC) of

IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top rank ...

in 2003. He also did his doctoral studies at the IDC, receiving his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

in 2010.

Research

His areas of interest include graphic design,

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

type design Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

and design research with special focus on

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...

typography (the subject of his doctoral research). He has also designed a Tamil font named "Parashakti" as a mini project at the IDC, under the guidance of Prof. G. V. Sreekumar, who is one of the few font experts in the country. During his MDes project he wrote and designed a book on Tamil

, which is the first attempt at bringing such a subject to a Tamil audience. In this book, Kumar also created new Tamil terminology for many typographic terms where English words were used. Kumar also provided guidance for the designing of the official mascot for the 49th

Inter IIT Sports Meet Inter IIT Sports Meet is the annual sports tournament of the Indian Institutes of Technology. It is organized in December, with the Aquatics events held separately in October. It is the longest running Inter-collegiate meet where all IITs parti ...

. Kumar conceptualised the design for Rupee symbol for Indian currency. The symbol is created using the Devanagari letter र 'Ra' and Roman capital letter 'R'. The letters are derived from the word Rupiah in Hindi and Rupees in English, so the symbol is meaningful to both Indians and international users. The symbol also uses the Shiro Rekha, the horizontal top line which is unique to Indian Devanagari script. The two horizontal lines form an "equals" sign, which also evokes the tri-color Indian flag.

Ambika Soni Ambika Soni (born 13 November 1942) is an Indian politician belonging to Indian National Congress. She had served as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. She was a Member of Parliament representing the state of Punjab in the Rajya Sabha. ...

approved the new rupee symbol on 15 July 2010. Udaya Kumar was awarded prize money of for his efforts.

References

External links

Homepage of Udaya Kumar

Udaya Kumar's design proposal for the Indian rupee sign

Official announcement of the sign

WebRupee, guidance for use of the sign on the web

WebRupee ₹ Drupal Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kumar, Udaya Living people Indian Tamil people Artists from Chennai 20th-century Indian designers 1978 births Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati faculty Anna University alumni IIT Bombay alumni