The 33 letters of the Georgian alphabet are among the most beautiful characters in the world. So it’s no wonder that their vibrant culture has been included on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. One designer who has made a significant contribution to the contemporary interpretation of Georgian typefaces is Akaki Razmadze, a Type Designer, Communications Design Consultant, and Lecturer in Typography based in Tbilisi.

Akaki Razmadze has made a name for himself translating legendary classics and recent popular typefaces (such as Neue Helvetica, FF Meta, Noto, Neue Frutiger, November, FiraGo, and Pangea) into his visual “native language” with great care and attention. But not only that, he is also the co-creator of the Georgian currency symbol and the driving force behind the inclusion of Georgian uppercase letters in the Unicode standard.

Most recently, he has worked with colleagues on a project in which they selected historical typefaces from old books and posters, digitized them, and released them as open-source fonts. The whole initiative was met with a great response within the Georgian design community and Akaki Razmadze hopes to continue dedicating himself to similar projects in the future.