Muthu Nedumaran has close to 4 decades of experience in typeface design and language based technologies. He began designing typefaces and creating input methods for complex writing systems in the early 80s. His initial work started off by developing bitmapped fonts for dot-matrix and laser printers and assembly language programs that intercepted the keyboard and translated keystrokes to Tamil characters. This changed the entire landscape of Tamil printing in Malaysia and Singapore. This comprehensive solution later became Murasu Anjal.
Muthu’s fonts for Indian and Indo-Chinese scripts are now bundled into iOS and macOS and all other Apple platforms, MS Windows and some Android devices. With the experience he gained over the years, he created and released a set of open source font proofing and debugging tools called Hibizcus.
Besides Typography Muthu has also innovated and built fast and efficient input methods for all the languages he works on, in various platforms.
His popular applications include Murasu Anjal, Sellinam, Sangam Keyboards and MobileJawi. Murasu Anjal is the official Tamil input software used by the Ministry of Education in Singapore and is most the most widely used app in Malaysia for Tamil education and publishing. Muthu is the creator of the “Anjal Input Method” which is included in major operating systems like macOS, iOS, iPadOS and Windows 11.
Muthu’s recent additions include Solvan, a text-to-speech engine that is built into Sellinam and Hibizcus, a suite of free and open source font proofing and debugging tools for South Asian and South East Asian languages. Hibizcus, first launched in 2021, is used by leading type foundries and experienced font engineers who work on complex text shaping.
Muthu, along with Khasturi Ramalingam created and launched a comprehensive app called Kani and Mani with the aim of helping children learn the Tamil language through stories and games. The first version of the app was launched in Singapore in 2019. Both their efforts continue in research based development of apps, incorporating emerging technologies, that help children master languages at a young age.
While the above work of his was inspired by pure passion, Muthu also has close to 2 decades of corporate experience, serving large technology giants like Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation as director of product marketing for the Asia Pacific region. He left his corporate life to pursue his passion full time in 2002.