Mahendra Patel (21.02.1943) is a retired senior faculty member from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India.

After his studies at Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda and at NID, he did Advance Graphic Design at School of Design, Basel, Switzerland, in 1968.

Later in 1971, he worked for one year, on type design projects at Atelier Frutiger in Paris.

His work has concentrated on type design development projects of Indian scripts. He has also worked extensively on map design projects including Tourist and Bus-route Maps for Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation; Guide Maps for Gujarat State and Goa District; Irrigation and Ecology Maps for Gujarat State; Industrial and Archeological Maps for Government of India.

In 2000, he has designed Signage Design System for Tirumala and Tirupati Devasthanam, India’s most busy privilege place.

In 2002 He has designed the Signage Design System for Hyderabad City.

Presently after retiring from NID, he is busy designing matching fonts for all Indian scripts, including English.

He has taught and practiced for 39 years at NID since 1964. He also conducts workshops and courses often at Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda; Srishti College of Arts and Design, Bangalore and Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Mumbai and Indian Insititute of Crafts, Jaipur.

He has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design, USA; Nova Scotia College of Arts, Canada; Christchurch College of Arts, New Zealand and Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, Pakistan.