Ayeshath Fadwa

Ayeshath Fadwa Waheed, who also goes by Ayesh, is a Maldivian graphic designer. She works in design, layout, illustration and branding, with a particular focus on Thaana typography, and has more than 25 years of experience. Clients listed there include Bank of Maldives, DHL Maldives, the National Art Gallery of Maldives, Transparency Maldives, UNDP Maldives, UNICEF Maldives and UNFPA Maldives.

With Shahee Ilyas she runs Thaana Type, a Maldivian type foundry that publishes free Thaana fonts under the SIL Open Font License. It went public with its first releases in 2020. The foundry came into being in Vietnam, and named its Viethaana font as a tribute to Saigon. The two had earlier designed and developed Nakaiy Nevi (2012), a mobile app for the traditional Maldivian nakaiy calendar.

Her own designs for the foundry include Kolhu, Theras, Masnooee Mono and Viethaana (2020), as well as Faaru Punk, Gurafiku and LCD Thaana (2021). Faaru Punk grew out of letters she drew for the logo of the band Kushehnooney's second album, Lah. With Shahee Ilyas she co-designed Bolhu, Fanara, Fanara Golhi, Faagathi Dheli and Faagathi Neon. The Faagathi fonts are based on early-20th-century manuscripts by the scholar Salaahuddin. Fanara Golhi received a Special Mention in the South Asian Scripts text typefaces category of the 12th Granshan Type Design Competition (2021/22).