Religion

Religion probably played the most important role in determining the structure and construction of Indian scripts.

Earlier, in the Indian culture, writing was considered as inferior to speech. And it was important to record the Vedas too. And with speech, perhaps, the content of Vedas were getting diluted.

Since Vedas had to be pronounced correctly, Brahmi, the phonetic script was born. If you see, the Arabic and Graeko-Roman forms are derived from pictograms or ideograms. The Indian letterforms are schematic designs based on the classification of the vedic sounds.

Later, the archaic, cursive forms of Maheshwari Brahmi evolved into the angular forms of Ashokan letters and further into Bharati, Devalipi (Nagari) and Devanagari.

Challenges

1.    The Kannada script is curvy and right decisions have to be taken when the forms are derived on the pixel grid
2.    Every akshara (letter) in the Kannada script can be categorized according to their basic forms irrespective of the fact whether it is a vowel or a consonant. (Thanks to Suresh, who had provided this important insight when Asutosh, my senior, had presented an Oriya typeface in his jury.)
3.    Compatibility is also a major issue. How would the Kannada typeface look on a browser loaded in a 160 x 160 pixel PDA, a 320 x 240 pixel PocketPC or maybe a Web-enabled microwave oven?
4.    It is important not to waste too much time on research because there are enough projects done on south-indian scripts. So the project should build upon those projects rather than starting from scratch. This way the effective output will be one level up.
5.    Although, familiarity of the Kannada script helps, it is essential to base all designs on the right proportion of every akshara and negate self by executing the understood task. To achieve that, thorough understanding of letterforms is necessary.