Morisawa People's Choice

Jack Jennings

The Morisawa foundry has posted the entries to their competition on their website for people's choice award. (Disclosure: I entered, but am not participating in the people's choice category.)

Latin: http://competition.morisawa.co.jp/en/fans/lati/
Kanji: http://competition.morisawa.co.jp/en/fans/

Perhaps it's because of my latin-exclusive eye, but the kanji entries seem to be much more consistently refined, both in concept and execution. In comparison, and disappointingly, the Latin stuff just doesn't seem up to par.

I'm not sure how well publicized the competition was outside of Japan. Maybe the idea of a competition is appealing to a different spectrum of designers (students or amateurs) in the latin-type world… I can imagine that the complexity of Japanese type design might also raise the bar significantly, and limit the entrants to "professionals", from the start.

Stephen Coles

the Latin stuff just doesn't seem up to par.

Indeed. There is some good stuff, but it's hidden by a lot of junk and there’s no way to link to individual entries to bring them the attention they deserve.

kupfers

Sorry, but the set-up of this voting page doesn’t work at all. Families are torn apart into individual weights and styles and the explanation about how voting works in very confusing.

“Find your favorite typeface and click "Vote". One vote for one typeface is valid during the voting period.”

Find how?

Neil Summerour

The Morisawa Type Competition is broken up into 3 categories for both the Latin and Japanese categories. Morisawa Award, Akashi Award and People's Choice. Designers can selectively elect which categories their competition entries are placed. It may be nothing more than some designers not opting to have their entries included in the public, People's Choice competition.

That said, I saw Cyrus Highsmith's tweet about leaving for Japan today. He is one of the Latin Judges along with Carter and Soskolne… they'll be able to sort through the fodder :-)

Jack Jennings

@kupfers The way that the voting is set up actually parallels the submission process, where each style has to be submitted as a separate entry. Looking through the archives, it might have been because some styles are given awards in distinction from their families, if that style has more merit. Not a good justification, but a possible explanation.

Edit: Actually if I recall correctly I don't think that a whole family has ever received a prize, just single weights/styles.

kupfers

Thanks for the clarification, Jack. I didn’t look into this. But giving awards to single styles seems rather inappropriate to me when it comes to latin typefaces. It would help if related styles were at least displayed together to be really able to judge them.

Craig Eliason

Yes, this display method actually not only splits the votes between related styles, but also makes them look like like copycats of each other.

James Puckett

It’s like a gallery of designs rejected by DaFont.com.

Nick Shinn

I never enter or judge competitions, but a trip to Japan (paid for by Morisawa, I presume) sounds like a pretty good deal!

Max Phillips

[…] each style has to be submitted as a separate entry.

"Wrong" doesn't begin to describe this.

But, yeah, there are a few really nice things in amongst the DaFont rejects.

Jack, I'm pretty sure Morisawa has awarded families and even superfamilies. For example, Roy Preston's Prentis, peace to its ashes.

Jack Jennings

@Max_Phillips You're right, I went back after I wrote that and immediately found some.