The Type Directors Club has open for entries into its TDC68 Communication Design and expanded 25TDC Typeface Design competitions.TDC68 recognises how letterforms are used, awarding typographic excellence and innovation along with the art and craft of typography and design. 25TDC focuses on how letterforms are drawn and awards new typeface designs in non-Latin letterforms. The competitions regularly receive entries from more than 60 countries.
To be eligible, work must have been produced or published in the 2021 calendar year. Early bird deadline for entry is October 29, with final deadline December 17. Fund everything you need to know to enter on the entry site.
Full juries for both competitions are:
TDC68 Communications Design
Co-Chair: Manija Emran, co-founder/creative director, Me and the Bootmaker, Los Angeles
Co-Chair: Joe Newton, partner, Anderson Newton Design, New York
- Antonio Alcalá, owner, designer, Studio A, Alexandria (US)
- Philippe Apeloig, creative director, Apeloig, Paris
- Anıl Aykan, editorial design, Barnbrook, London
- Götz Grämlich, founder, dipl. designer, gggrafik design, Heidelberg (Germany)
- Eva Kellenberger, cofounder, Kellenberger-White, London
- Hassan Rahim, owner, art director, 12:01 AM, New York
- Mehdi Saeedi, graphic designer, visual artist, Mehdi Saeedi Studio, Philadelphia
- Osmond Tshuma, cofounder, creative director, Mam’gobozi Design Factory, Johannesburg
- Emma Thomas, cofounder, director, A Practice for Everyday Life, London
- Kelly Walters, artist, designer, founder, Bright Polka Dot; educator, Parsons School of Design, New York
TDC68 Communications Design includes a new Design for Social Good category.
The 25TDC Typeface Design competition has expanded. For the first time, it includes dedicated categories and expert judges for Arabic, Indic, and Chinese/Japanese/Korean. The competition has always accepted entries for those scripts. The expansion of dedicated categories and additional judges was prompted by the increased number of entries for these scripts in recent years.
Each of the script categories has three dedicated expert jury members, increasing the total number of 25TDC jurors from six to 14.
25TDC Typeface Design
Co-Chair: Dr Nadine Chahine, director, ArabicType; CEO, I Love Typography, London
Co-Chair: Ksenya Samarskaya, director, Samarskaya & Partners, Brooklyn.
Main category
- Kostas Bartsokas, type designer, typographer, Thessaloniki (Greece)
- Martin Majoor, founder, Martin Majoor, Arnhem (Netherlands)/Warsaw
- Daria Petrova, type designer, Berlin
- Ulrike Rausch, type designer, founder, LiebeFonts, Berlin
Arabic
- Khajag Apelian, lettering artist, type designer, graphic designer, Beirut/Yerevan
- Borna Izadpanah, graphic and typeface designer, researcher, London
- Mamoun Sakkal, founder, principal, Sakkal Design, Seattle
Indic
- Kimya Gandhi, typeface designer, partner, Mota Italic, Berlin/Mumbai
- Neelakash Kshetrimayum, creative director, Brandnewtype, Goa
- Anagha Narayanan, independent type designer, Hyderabad (India)
Chinese/Japanese/Korean
- Minjoo Ham, type designer, typographer, graphic designer, Berlin
- Lisa Huang, independent type designer, Paris
- Kazuhiro Yamada, senior type designer, Monotype, Tokyo
A change to TDC student entries will be announced shortly.
TDC68 and 25TDC winners receive a Certificate of Typographic Excellence and digital tag certifying their work is among the world’s best of the year. Winning work will be featured in the TDC Annual, The World’s Best Typography, and displayed in eight exhibitions that travel to museums, schools and design organisations around the world. In the student categories, three students for TDC68 and one for 25TDC will win monetary awards.
This year’s call for entries is supported by a striking branding campaign designed by TDC member, Tereza Bettinardi, based in São Paulo, which creatively explores the “counterspaces” or inner parts of letters. Typefaces for the campaign are Proxy by Commercial Type and ABC Laica by Dinamo, both of which were generously donated by the foundries.
Bettinardi was a two-time winner in last year’s TDC67 competition, receiving certificates for As Mulheres Contam on behalf of Carambaia in Books/Single, and Cursos E Oficinas for Sesc 24 de Maio in Miscellaneous/Campaigns.
TDC is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary as a professional design organisation and its second year as part of The One Club for Creativity.
