letterspace Fall-Winter 1999
The Type Directors Club forty-fifth annual international competition, TDC45, and the second annual TDC typeface design competition have been judged. This year was the largest response in the history of the Club with nearly 4,000 entries from 32 countries.
In TDC45, there were 261 winners selected (78 international works) from fourteen countries plus the U.S. The countries whose works will be represented in the traveling exhibitions, and annual are: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Germany, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
TDC45 Chairman Adam Greiss (O Design Group) guided the jury which included: Drew Hodges (Spot Design), John Korpics (Entertainment Weekly), Bill Oberlander (Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners), John Parham (Parham Santana), Stefan Sagmeister (Sagmeister Design), Jennifer Sterling (Sterling Design, San Francisco) and Niklaus Troxler (graphic designer, Switzerland) through a hectic weekend of judging print and electronic material.
Mr. Greiss stated, "I'm proud to say that this year's call for entry received the largest-ever response. The judging went very well, and the judges themselves were fantastic. Of the nearly 4,000 entries for this year's TDC show, 261 pieces were selected for the show/annual. Their selections ranged from modern and very contemporary work to the more classic style. Overall, the show/annual is a very good indicator of the high-quality type of design/typography being done right now."
For the second year, Student work was judged, and then three students were selected to win monetary awards. The students awarded $500, $300, and $200 were respectively: Anja Wesner (Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts), Daisuke Endo (School of Visual Arts, New York), and Lisamarie Trombetta (School of Visual Arts, New York). Their work will be shown in the annual as prize winners. The awards will be presented at the New York opening.
The entries for TDC2 were reviewed by a separate jury which included Barbara Glauber (Heavy Meta), Dennis Ortiz-Lopez (New York), Hans Meier (Switzerland) and Freda Sack (The Foundry, London).
The typefaces selected in the Type Directors Club second independently-juried type design competition, TDC2 included: ITC Silvermoon and ITC Japanese Gardens by Akira Kobayashi; Cutouts by Serge Pichi; Vancouver, British Columbia; Linotype Zapfino; Asmik fromParaType, Moscow; Antionette and Salomé by Lee Scultz, Brighton, MA, Laika, by Jens Gehlhaar, Gagatype, Los Angeles; Arial Hebrew by Baruch Gorkin, Access Factory, New York; Risso by Eric Fowles, Louisville, Colorado, and The Sans T, Agrofont, and The AntiquaB by Luc(as) de Groot, Berlin. The competition was co-chaired by TDC board members James Montalbano and Paul Shaw and targeted all type design released in 1998. There were 130 typefaces submissions which constituted over 350 individual fonts from 11 countries plus the U.S., of which 13 were selected by the jury. six were from Germany, Russia and Canada and seven from the U.S.
Paul Shaw said, "The second TDC2 type design competition was as surprising as the first. Once again, the judges were unpredictable, yet tough. Once again the winners represent 10% of the entries. While last year's show had a calligraphic flavor, this time there is no clear-cut trend. The only entry that won unanimous, unqualified praise was a pi font of African-flavored images. It is gratifying to see a number of new designers earning recognition. Hermann Zapf and Luc(as) de Groot are the only well-known designers in the winner's circle, and among the well-known type foundries only ITC is represented. The other gratifying aspect of the competition is the continued participation of designers working with Cyrillic, Armenian and Hebrew typefaces. We hope that the next competition will have an even wider variety of non-Latin entries. Although still in its infancy, tdc 2 is proving itself as the quality independent type competition that the industry sorely needs. While saluting this year's winners, I look forward to the future.
Typography 20, the TDC annual will contain all the typefaces from TDC2 as well as TDC45 . Typography 20 is being designed by Carin Goldberg and is published by Watson-Guptill Publications. It is expected in the bookstores early December.