Seeking global recognition for your type design project? Granshan 2012 has announced the 5th International Type Design Competition for non-Latin typefaces. Entries can be submitted until May 21, 2012. The categories include Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, Indian, Arabic as well as Latin typefaces. Type designers from all parts of the world are invited to participate. Eligible are all typefaces that have been designed or digitized after 2001 and meet the competition requirements. The organizing committee of Granshan, has decided for this year to hold the competition in Yerevan, Armenia celebrating the 500th anniversary of the first printed Armenian book and the declaration of Yerevan as World Book Capital 2012 by UNESCO. The winners will be announced at a press conference held by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia in Yerevan in the month of June. Following the announcement, winning works and further selected entries will be exhibited in Yerevan and subsequently shown in Munich during the month of November and in Hong Kong during the month of October at ATypI conference.

Further information can be found here: www.granshan.org

For the second consecutive year Communication Arts held its annual typography and type design competition in search for the best typography of the year. The 2012 Typography Annual showcases the 150 winning projects selected by a distinguished panel of jurors such as Richard Kegler, Erik Spiekermann and Tiffany Wardle de Sousa.
More than 1,700 entries were submitted for this second Typography Annual, reflecting the quantity of work produced in a single year. The organisers were pleased with the international nature of the submissions, especially in the typeface category, and the inclusion of several non-Latin typefaces.

Regal Finesse Pro by Parachute, was selected to be among the winners in the typeface design category. This is not the first time that various families from the Regal series receive awards. Regal was also a winner in last year’s Creative Review Type Competition, as well as a winner in the Granshan Awards 2010. Regal Pro was originally created for the redesign of Grazia magazine and later was revamped and upgraded for commercial use. The original 3 basic families were expanded to include more variations, ligatures, swashes and additional support for Latin and Greek. The final version of Regal includes 5 families. Currently Regal Pro is available offline but will be officially released online shortly.

Supply and demand in the area of typographic design is growing considerably in recent years. Since the introduction of digital fonts and their promotion via the internet, typography has gained a new significance.

Type Navigator is the new essential handbook of independent type foundries and innovative type designers from around the world. It comes with an extensive presentation of each type foundry and includes a large number of specimens as well as several interviews. This publication was edited by typography expert Jan Middendorp, created by TwoPoints.net and published by Gestalten. According to Jan Middendorp, the selection criteria were based on the quality of work, originality and diversity of type designs.

Among the foundries featured in the book is Parachute with several award winning typefaces such as Encore Sans Pro, Centro Slab Pro, Adamant Pro, Regal Pro. Other foundries include Fountain, LucasFonts, Porchez Typofonderie, Sudtipos, Shinntype, TypeTogether, Typoteque, Underware.
The 320-page book is accompanied by a free digital collection of fonts from several foundries. It was presented recently at a special event in Berlin, where several experts such as Lucas de Groot, Tim Ahrens and Shoko Mugikura lectured about type.

Typography has become an important sales tool and some kind of a trend in package design. The visual personality of type and its association to certain emotions, is important when it comes to selling the product and attracting the right audience. Having this in mind, we collected a number of packages which are just inspiring if not beautiful. Enjoy!

Marton by Kiss Miklos

Katie Mullins’ Pastoral cover by Ryan Feerer

Sandro Desii by Lociento Studio

Freak by Propaganda

Hydro plane by French Paper’s Air Craft

Breuckelen Gin by Breuckelen Distilling

Reishunger by Funny Paper

Heide Honey by Pidgeon Design

Milk Paint by Dawn Steinbock

DIESEL by TACN studio

Christmas Absinthe by Stranger & Stranger

Mina Harissa by Monday Collective

San Cosme by Savvy Studio

Bagel Street Water by Nikolaj Kledzik

Hand-Drawn Text by The Manual Co.

Expressing yourself with words and type, can be really convincing and cool to see. The following images are some scenes from Mecna’s videoclip under the title “Super”, edited by Corrado Grilli and directed by The Boss a.k.a Nicky Beach. The lyrics, the rap, the editing and typography design is all from scratch. Scroll down to watch the video. Enjoy!