Upcoming Competitions?
Hey everyone! I was wondering if there are any upcoming type design competitions? I know the deadline for TDC just passed, but perhaps in the coming months? I have a typeface I have been working on that is quite extraordinary, but has no real market value >.< it's a load of fun, and I feel I need to enter it in a competition. Perhaps any student oriented competitions? Thanks!
Simon.
Simon.
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1: Don't take part in anything too expensive. And beware competitions that "reward" winners by charging them extra...
2: If it has a non-Latin (heh, heh, heh... :-) for sure go for Granshan.0 -
Take a look at Graphis dot com there is a typeface competition. 5 Days Remaining. However, I think you have to pay to register your typeface.0
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The main reason I would like to win at TDC is to refuse to pay the extra fee and make more people aware of it.0
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Hrant, I don't understand why you have such a problem with the publication/hanging fees charged to the winners (which are clearly stated up front). Would you rather those expenses be subsidized by the competition losers? Seems fair to me to have the winners who actually benefit from the TDC publicity be the ones to help fund it.
If I won having paid $155 I'd be thrilled. Happier than I have been as a loser who paid $65.2 -
Publication/hanging fees for winners is a slap in the face from the competition organizers. The cash needed to publish the book should be subsidized by the entirety of the competition entry fees.
Some competitions actually GIVE prizes to winners, rather than asking money from the winners.2 -
Not the losers, the submitters. I once did the math: it would add less than $10 to the submission fee. I feel this is totally worth it to avoid what is perceived by some people to be a shady practice.Craig Eliason said:Would you rather those expenses be subsidized by the competition losers?
BTW my purpose in consistently bringing up this flaw has always been not to shame the TDC but motivate it to find a better way. The TDC does good work, but we can all do better.
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Can anyone report upon having contributed to a competition did cause impact on product exposure / font sales figures?
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Yeah regarding the recent TDC competition, I was so jazzed up to enter the moment I saw the ads on social media because it would be my first time getting into one of these but the hanging fees for winners is just weird that put me off and so I backed out of it. Hanging fees for non-winners who would still like their work to be seen separately from the winners makes more sense. I don't know why they needs separate hanging fees, maybe to pay for rental space? Whatever it is, it's kinda weird asking winners to pay for that too on top of the entry fee. It's a sizable chunk specially for non-members.1
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Purely financially (not even factoring in the negative impression of a sort-of-hidden fee) one has to wonder: would more entrants be lost to a small increase in the submission fee than currently are to the hanging/publication fee?AbiRasheed said:hanging fees for winners is just weird that put me off and so I backed out of it.
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The TDC show is packed up and shipped around the world for display by other organizations. Shipping all that stuff adds up.AbiRasheed said:I don't know why they needs separate hanging fees, maybe to pay for rental space?7 -
I would enter if there was no "winner fee". Just puts a bad taste in my mouth.1
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In TDC competition, what is difference between single and series entry?
Single is for one font family only?
And series are for a couple of families where they share same typeface design (i.e. sans serif, serif, stencil versions)?
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This is a good thing to talk about.Andreas Stötzner said:Can anyone report upon having contributed to a competition did cause impact on product exposure / font sales figures?
As the two extensive surveys from Mary Catherine Pflug have revealed, retail customers really don't give a hoot about awards. But I do believe –especially in this age of marketing via social media– that the word-of-mouth/mindshare aspect of winning an award very much matters for commissioned work. This is not unlike speaking at a conference.
I've entered a good amount of competitions since the late '90s (although –maybe tellingly– not any lately) and have been pretty fortunate, statistically — and although I have little to no formal evidence, my impression has been that it puts me on the radar of people who otherwise don't know I exist, which must help.
My general advice is to choose competitions not just for their prestige, but most of all based on your chances of winning being decent.0 -
Just announced (rather early), arguably the most prestigious one out there:
http://competition.morisawa.co.jp/en/
I'm not sure about the current details, but in the past it's been not only free to enter, but comes with large monetary prizes.2 -
Huh. I thought the best and only free competition for extraordinary work with no real market value, is the Typecon thing. That is still going after all these, what... two years, I wonder... or was it exhausted self-catering to the individual needs of the judges. Anyone know, tell Simon. Thanks.
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Some people simply get more turned on by ideas than money. Personally I feel sorry for anybody who doesn't, but that's just me. In the big picture though I would say that competitions are much more useful to observers gauging the state of the craft than to those hoping to milk their winner.
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I've entered the TDC competition plenty of times over the years, had work selected fairly often, and never considered the hanging fee 'shady'. As others noted: it is explained up front in the entry information. One year, I had two entries selected, so that was kind of expensive, but I was aware of the possibility when I sent the entries. Personally, I find entry fees more problematic than hanging fees: paying for the likelihood of not being selected seems to me a less attractive proposition than paying towards costs of publishing and exhibiting one's work internationally. Increasing entry fees so that designers of selected works don't have to pay for those costs seems to me both unfair and likely to reduce the number of entrants. The best competitions I have been involved with over the years are the ones with no entry fee at all, which have no financial bar to entry, and hence attract large numbers of entries from around the world (e.g. the ATypI competitions in 2001 and 2010).
I enter the TDC competition because I'm mostly making custom types for clients, so my work doesn't get the exposure of marketing that fonts for retail licensing would. I also think the TDC does a good job in selecting judges: the jury is regularly made up of people whose opinion I respect.6 -
Somehow none of those charge the winners either...John Hudson said:The best competitions I have been involved with over the years are the ones with no entry fee at all
As far as I know the TDC is the only one that does. Even if the TDC spends more promoting the winners, to me that's more unfair than a slightly higher entry fee that simply accounts for a known eventual expense. And as we can see in this thread, it causes people to not submit. In contrast, I've never heard anybody say they would submit if only the entry fee were $8 lower.
Concerning the quality of the jury, it's usually quite high when it comes to Latin. However when it comes to non-Latin, I find the TDC's approach far inferior to Granshan's, at the very least in terms of being way too opaque. Even protoType managed to handle non-Latin more graciously.0 -
@John Hudson any insight on what a winning 11x17 contains? other than a winning typeface, I mean
If it's a superfamily I imagine TDC allows multiple pages?0 -
I try to make my entries visually interesting. Having judged a few type design competitions, I can tell you that when there are lots of entries to sift through it can be hard to remember specific ones, so try to think of a novel way to present the typeface. A couple of selected entries:
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I would enter a competition where you just have to send in the font, and the judges assess it by working with it.
As it is, I find it impossible to muster the time or enthusiasm to design and make entries on a speculative basis; I have enough trouble preparing banner ads for use by the distributors of retail fonts.
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@Nick Shinn I'm glad you made an exception for the protoType competition. :-)0
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@Nick ShinnI have enough trouble preparing banner ads for use by the distributors of retail fonts.I might well feel the same way if I were also obtaining publicity through my work via retail marketing. One of the reasons I have submitted work so regularly to TDC is that its an opportunity to publicise custom font work. There are few such opportunities.4
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There are also another kind of more "industrial" competitions where you can buy the awards directly from the competition organizers. Usually competition with many many categories and type design just happen to be one more of them.
It's utterly silly, but some people love to buy this shit so they can congratulate themselves
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FWIW apparently the TDC entry fee is 10%-off, only tomorrow, using the discount code "MAX".0
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Thanks everyone! Wishing all a happy holiday, I’ve been too busy visiting family to sit at my computer and take a look, but will when I’m back.0
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@James Puckett gotcha.0
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