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#Active codes, 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 Jul ...

. His design was selected from among five short listed symbols. According to Kumar, the design is based on the Indian tricolour. he is the Head of the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati, Assam.

Personal life

A native of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

, Kumar was born in Marur near Tiruvannamalai and raised in North Chennai. He is the son of N. Dharmalingam, who was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu from 1971 to 1976.

Academics

Kumar attended La Chatelaine Junior College in

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

. He obtained a bachelor's degree in architecture ( BArch) from the School of Architecture and Planning (SAP) at

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

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

Visual Communication Visual communication is the use of visual elements to convey ideas and information which include (but are not limited to) signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, advertising, animation, and electronic resourc ...

, from the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) of

IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT- Bombay or IIT-B) is a Public university, public research university and Institute of technology, technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. IIT Bombay is mainly known for the hig ...

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

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 2010.

Research

His areas of interest include

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

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: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

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. 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. It also uses the Shirorekha, 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 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 Academic staff of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Anna University alumni IIT Bombay alumni