D. Udaya Kumar with the rupee symbol he designed in the background. Picture by Amit Datta

Who designed the dollar sign? The pound sign? Or the Yen sign? The answer is buried in the dusty recesses of history. D. Udaya Kumar admits he is lucky to have been born in this age of information overflow. The 32-year-old designer of the rupee sign was on his maiden visit to Calcutta as a guest of the Scindia School Old Boys Association recently.

“You wouldn’t even know who designed the Euro, though it happened in recent memory. The European Commission did not disclose the names of the designers as a policy decision.” In contrast, Kumar was flooded with calls from the media as soon as the result of the contest was announced by information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni.

That was two-and-half months back. “But I still remember how the calls kept coming till 1am. I had to change my phone batteries two-three times. A friend calculated that I had given 55 interviews that day,” says the soft-spoken young man, who remains modest despite the headline-grabbing achievement.

The PhD in industrial design from IIT Bombay, who had set aside his research on transformation of Tamil letter forms from palm leaf manuscripts to early letter press printing to focus on the design contest, admits to using his own sign whenever he can. “I used the sign in the forms I had to fill up for my new job. I use it on bank cheques even if the letters Rs are already there. If I don’t use my own creation, who will?” he smiles. He was thrilled when a friend sent him scanned images of advertisements using the sign. “Since then, I have spotted it on price tags of jeans and book covers too.” He has kept a sign ready for paisa too, should the government ever need one.

To popularise the sign, he has suggested a place on the computer keyboard where it can be embedded. “Let it be Shift+6, one place away from the dollar sign. The ^ that is there now is rarely used and can also be obtained by a combination of keys. So it is redundant.”

The rupee sign is also available on the Net for downloading. But in the ads that are using it now the sign looks mismatched. “This is because each font has its own design philosophy but they are using exactly what I have created with whatever font they are using. In future I hope all font designers will consider creating the rupee symbol to suit the particular font.”

He has recently joined as an assistant professor in the department of design at IIT Guwahati. “I fell in love with the greenery on the campus when I had gone there for a sports meet as a student. In future, nature will protect us, not technology,” he smiles.