Half of our projects in Dhaka ship in two scripts. Bangla and Latin type behave very differently, and a layout that looks balanced in one can fall apart in the other.
Pair by colour, not by name
Ignore font families that promise both scripts in one file until you have tested them. We pair on visual weight and texture: set a paragraph in each, squint, and adjust until the two greys match.
Give Bangla room to breathe
Bangla has deep ascenders and the matra line across the top. It needs more line height than English — we usually start at 1.7 against 1.5 for Latin — and slightly larger sizes to read comfortably.
- Raise line height by 10–15% for Bangla text blocks.
- Never letter-space Bangla; it breaks conjuncts.
- Check every heading for clipped vowel signs.
- Test on low-cost Android phones, where most readers are.
A bilingual site is two reading experiences that share a grid.
Write once, design twice
Translated copy is rarely the same length. We design components that tolerate a 30% swing in either direction, and we review both languages in every design critique, not just at the end.