Terma Foundry
A Tibetan type foundry.
Terma Foundry is the type foundry of the Terma Heritage Foundation, based in New York and run by Tibetans. We draw our own typefaces, choose the best of others', test each one on every system, and serve them from our font CDN, so Tibetan shows correctly on any website.
The people the script owes its shape to.
In order of time, as tradition gives it. Arcs join a teacher and student, or a text and its commentary.
-
ཐོན་མི་སམ་བྷོ་ཊ
Thonmi Sambhota
7th century
Credited by tradition with creating the Tibetan script and its first grammars.
-
ལྡན་མ་རྩེ་མང
Denma Tsemang
8th century
Scribe and calligrapher; the Den tradition of writing is named after him.
-
སྐ་བ་དཔལ་བརྩེགས
Kawa Peltseg
8th–9th century
Translator; co-compiled the Mahāvyutpatti and shaped early calligraphy.
-
ཅོག་རོ་ཀླུའི་རྒྱལ་མཚན
Chogro Lüi Gyaltsen
8th–9th century
Translator; co-compiled the Mahāvyutpatti, the standard Sanskrit–Tibetan glossary.
-
ཁྱུང་པོ་གཡུ་ཁྲི་འབར
Khyungpo Yutri Bar
9th century
Credited with the Uchen system of letterforms.
-
རོང་པོ
Rongpo
9th century
Wrote the Uchen handwriting manual, The Clear, Precious Box.
-
བསོད་ནམས་རྩེ་མོ
Sönam Tsemo
1142–1182
A primer for children learning the letters is listed among his works.
-
ས་སྐྱ་པཎྜི་ཏ
Sakya Pandita
1182–1251
Master of grammar; wrote a commentary on that primer.
-
སྡེ་སྲིད་སངས་རྒྱས་རྒྱ་མཚོ
Desi Sangye Gyatso
1653–1705
His commentary on Rongpo’s manual set the basis of Uchen.
What a complete Tibetan font needs.
- Glyph coverageThe whole Tibetan Unicode block, U+0F00–U+0FFF, and every valid stack, including the Sanskrit stacks: several thousand glyphs.
- OpenType rulesSubstitution rules that turn a letter and its subjoined letters and vowel signs into the right stacked form, so no dotted circle appears.
- MetricsAscender and descender values that hold the tallest stacks, and spacing that suits the tsheg, with a tested line height.
- HintingStrokes aligned to the pixel grid so small sizes stay clear on screen; for Tibetan, at every level of a stack.
- Testing on every systemTibetan is shaped by HarfBuzz, Uniscribe and CoreText, and each behaves differently. A font is tested on all of them, against every valid sequence.
- Review by calligraphersEvery stroke, angle and proportion checked against traditional models by practising calligraphers.
Seven parts, one syllable.
A Tibetan syllable stacks its letters. A font has to draw every stack, and fit it on the line.
A single letter, hundreds of decisions.
Each letter is drawn from a calligrapher's original, then refined point by point until it reads clearly at every size and on every screen. A Tibetan typeface has hundreds of letters and thousands of stacks, and each gets the same care.
How we choose fonts.
Most fonts in our gallery were made by other designers. Before a font goes in, we count the stacks it draws, test it on every system we can, and look for cut-off vowels and dotted circles. Each font stays its designer's work, under its own licence, and every card names who made it.
Use our fonts on the web.
Every font in the gallery is served from our font CDN. Add one line to your page, then put the font first in your CSS. Each stylesheet covers Tibetan only, so English keeps your own font.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.termafoundry.com/jomolhari.css">Meet the people behind
Terma Foundry.
Terma Foundry was founded by Thupten Chakrishar, who started this work wanting his children to love their language and found that the fonts to do it did not exist. At its calligraphic core is his father, Jamyang Dorjee, a master calligrapher. Tibetan linguists and educators review the designs, and type designers, font engineers and script specialists turn the drawings into fonts that work everywhere.
Thupten Chakrishar
Designs our typefaces; 20+ years in technology and design
A social entrepreneur and technologist with more than twenty years in technology, design and community service, with a background in software development, media production and 3D animation. He draws our typefaces and leads the engineering behind the fonts and the tools: TermaType, PechaForge, TermaOCR and the dictionary. He is a co-founder of the Himalayan Elders Project.
Jamyang Dorjee Chakrishar
Tibetan Calligrapher
A Tibetan calligrapher with decades of practice, and Thupten's father. He checks our letterforms against the traditional models.
Sonam Tsering
Director, Tibetan Language Program, Columbia University
Director of the Tibetan language program at Columbia University. Previously at the University of Michigan — where he also taught remotely at Yale and Ohio State — he brings firsthand insight into how Tibetan is taught and learned across institutions today. Originally from Rebgong, and later a founder and editor of Bod kyi Dus bab (Tibet Times) in the exile community in India, Sonam checks that our fonts and tools serve how Tibetan is taught, for learners at every level.
Dr. Yewong Dongchung
Cultural historian of Tibet, Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University
A cultural historian of early modern Tibet and China, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Brown University. Her dissertation, "Carvers and Print Workshops," traces the development of Tibetan-language woodblock printing houses from the 17th to 19th centuries, and how monastic leaders took up printing to preserve Buddhist knowledge. She brings the history of Tibetan printing and its craft to our work.
Tashi Gyaltsen
Cloud solutions architect, 15+ years in secure, scalable infrastructure
A cloud solutions architect with more than fifteen years in secure, scalable infrastructure. He has led cloud migrations, identity and access management, and network design for distributed systems, and advises on the systems behind our fonts and tools.
We also make tools for Tibetan text: TermaType, PechaForge, TermaOCR and the Dictionary.