Pathum Egodawatta is an interdisciplinary designer, thinker, and catalyst working in the holistic of type, text, design, code, and culture෴
Volunteering
Director, Institute of Typography, Sri Lanka (2021–)
Pathum serves on the board of the Institute of Typography, a Sri Lankan non-profit organisation that promotes typography, type design and lettering education and research.
Convenor, Akuru Collective (2017–2020, 2023–2025)
Pathum coordinated the Akuru Collective, a community of designers, researchers and developers working on Sinhala and Tamil typography and the local type design ecosystem.
Curator-at-large, W A Silva Museum for Language, Literature and Typography
Pathum volunteers as a curator, supporting the museum’s work on preserving and presenting Sri Lanka’s language, literature and typographic heritage.
Hanthana Linux (December 2017–April 2018)
Pathum contributed to Hanthana Linux, a Sri Lankan Linux distribution project, working on localisation and font support for Sinhala and Tamil.
Technical
Sinhala fonts and encoding standards
Pathum leads open-source work on how Sinhala fonts are specified, built and tested against encoding standards.
Lanka Glyphsets defines tiered glyphsets and glyph naming rules for fonts serving Sri Lankan users, covering Sinhala and Tamil, with a reader, CLI and OpenType feature generator.
Sinhala Font Tools is a set of tools for Sinhala font development, including working with legacy encodings and Unicode.
SLS 1134: Fourth Revision draft (January 2025–)
Pathum is developing the latest update to the Sri Lanka Standard for Information Interchange.
Contributions to Unicode Standard (December 2017–)
Pathum is a member of the Lanka Local Languages Working Group, which is collaborating with Unicode editors on rewriting the Unicode Standard Core Specification for Sinhala.
Sinhala Generation Panel, ICANN (December 2017–April 2018)
Pathum served on the Sinhala Generation Panel for Root Zone Sinhala Label Generation Rules (SinhalaGP).
GNU GPL font licensing (December 2017–April 2018)
Pathum advised the Free Software Foundation on the font exception in the GNU General Public License and on font embedding technologies in PDF files.
Contributions to Fontforge (2014–2018)
Pathum maintained the FontForge issue tracker and contributed to a major revamp of its UI. He also updated the website and documentation.
Unified Font Repository and related projects (2019–)
Pathum contributes to font packaging standards and open-source projects for font distribution.
Knowledge
Typoday 2017
Pathum led the international Typoday 2017 event, successfully securing funding, partnerships, and global promotion. This initiative created new opportunities and collaborations in typography for Sri Lanka, ultimately leading to the formation of the Akuru Collective.
The Typography Educators Forum 2017
Pathum conceived and led The Typography Educators Forum, which successfully fostered new teaching techniques for undergraduate design courses. Through this initiative, he empowered graphic design educators to develop fundamental tools for improving typographic execution and crafting skills.
Dutch–Ceylon Typographic Heritage Project
Pathum directed a heritage project dedicated to exploring the shared typographic and printing history between Sri Lanka and The Netherlands. This initiative specifically highlighted 18th-century Sinhala and Tamil type-making by the Dutch Press, fostering significant cultural exchange and knowledge.
Galle Font Project
Pathum led the Galle Font Project, focusing on developing a digital typeface based on 18th-century Dutch Press letterforms for cultural preservation. He directed the initial research and proof-of-concept design, preparing for the open-source release of this historical font revival.
AkuruCon 2018
Pathum orchestrated AkuruCon 2018 in collaboration with the Dutch Embassy, celebrating 280 years since the introduction of movable type in Sri Lanka. This event featured impactful workshops and seminars on shared typographic history, engaging diverse participants from design and public sectors.
Akurugraphy (June–November 2026)
Pathum co-curated Akurugraphy with Kosala Senevirathne and Rajitha Manamperi through Mooniak, at Geoffrey Bawa Space, Colombo. Mooniak’s first major public exhibition, it explores Sri Lankan letterforms across Sinhala, Tamil and English scripts, their beauty, their history and where their future lies in digital systems. Drawing on typefaces, archival research, software development and script standardisation, it asks whether digital infrastructure can ever be truly neutral.
Research
Found Letters Lanka (වීදියේ අකුරු)
Pathum runs Found Letters Lanka, a growing collection of handcrafted lettering found on the streets of Sri Lanka, in Sinhala, Tamil and English, built with photographs sent in by the public.
Typefaces
Maname
Pathum designed Maname, an open-source Sinhala typeface with Latin support, available on Google Fonts.
Abhaya Libre
Pathum worked on Abhaya Libre, an open-source serif typeface family for Sinhala and Latin, available on Google Fonts.
Noto Sans Sinhala
Pathum worked on Noto Sans Sinhala, a sans-serif Sinhala typeface in the Noto family, which aims to cover every script in Unicode. It is available on Google Fonts.
Talks
Digital Archives in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Panel discussion, Geoffrey Bawa Trust
Pathum joined a panel on how artificial intelligence is changing the way digital archives are made and used.
The Story of FM Sinhala Fonts
In conversation with Pushpananda Ekanayaka, Geoffrey Bawa Trust (in Sinhala)
Pathum talked with Pushpananda Ekanayaka about the history of the FM family of Sinhala fonts.
Poster Workshop Kalpitiya
Workshop
Pathum ran a hands-on poster workshop in Kalpitiya for children aged 14–18 from underserved communities.
How to Build a Font Industry in a Bankrupt Country?
Opening talk, Script and Structure conference, Sri Lanka Design Festival 2024
Pathum asked whether a viable font industry is possible amid Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, arguing for infrastructure, community and standards over product alone.
Crafting Type Singapore
Workshop
Pathum taught a hands-on type design workshop in Singapore, part of the international Crafting Type series.
Understanding fonts as Infrastructure
Panel discussion, ATypI Working Seminar Colombo 2019
Pathum joined a panel on understanding fonts as infrastructure.
South Asian Typography and Understanding Design Colonization
Chat Masala, South Asian Design Educators Alliance (SADEA)
Pathum discussed how colonial printing left typographic conventions that persist in South Asian design practice and education, and what decolonising them could mean.
Typography for Children’s Literature Workshop
IBBY Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Print Media Academy
Pathum led a workshop for 25 designers, writers and illustrators on designing Sinhala children’s books, together with Dr. Sumanthri Samarawickrama and Rashandi Vihara Porambage.
Kundaliya: The Disappearance of a Sinhala Punctuation
Typoday 2017, Colombo
Pathum traced how the traditional Sinhala paragraph mark vanished from print under colonial printing conventions, and whether it can return.
Indic text capabilities in Libre Graphics software
Libre Graphics Meeting 2016, London
Pathum reviewed the state of Indic script support in Inkscape, Scribus and GIMP, and the gaps to close for South Asian typography workflows.
Jumping into Libre Graphics
Libre Graphics Meeting 2015, Toronto (remote)
Pathum gave a remote presentation on entering the libre graphics community.
Other Letter: A Hybrid of Sinhala and Tamil Scripts
Typoday 2014, Pune
Pathum presented the Other Letter project, a hybrid of Sinhala and Tamil scripts.
Media
Kolonbiya
Pathum is the founder and executive producer of Kolonbiya, a popular YouTube Sinhala drama series with a loyal youth cult following. He conceptualised and co-founded the project and led the creative vision. The show is known for its sharp humour, subtle political commentary, and groundbreaking storytelling that mainstreamed discussions on marijuana usage, mass migration, and psychedelics in subtle artistic ways. The channel has over 180K subscribers with a loyal audience base.
Ko Universe
Pathum conceived and founded Ko Universe, a YouTube channel built on the Kolonbiya universe to deepen discussions on the themes explored in the series. Since its founding, the channel has built a 25,000-strong following with sporadic content, podcasts, and commentary on political subjects and thematic content.
Now they are few, we are many
Pathum conceptualised and produced a viral video titled “Now, They Are Few. We Are Many” aimed at the armed forces during the 2022 protests, which gained over four million combined views on social media. The video was designed to shift the perspective of members of the armed forces to stand with the protesting public.
2022 Protest video archive
Pathum commissioned and led the largest project to capture and build a large library of the 2022 Sri Lankan protests.
LankaVoice
Pathum ran LankaVoice, a YouTube channel connecting peaceful protesters across the island and around the world during the #GotaGoGama protests and the Aragalaya.
Last updated March 2026