Not a bad idea at all — as long as it’s significantly different from TDC2, Linotype’s ITDC, and the recently announced Computer Review Type Design Awards.

Speaking of this, we need to fill in the Competitions wiki entry.

I think it is a great idea.

What would be some unique Typophile points that would differentiate such a competition from the others?

A long time ago, there was the _Typophile 50_ show. That was way cool.

I can’t see the point of type design contest/competitions, unless there is a seriously good cash prize.

newlyn.com

Judges for the CR competition:

Bruno Maag, Dalton Maag
Nick Hayes, Identikal
Dave Wakefeld
Fiona Ross
Jason Smith, Fontsmith
Domenic Lippa, Lippa Pearce

with due respect to the individuals, it’s not a panel who’ms (gr?)decisions I could respect.

Miles, you’re right: we would need to consider awards and judges at the beginning. For both of those, it might be best to look outside of Typophile… maybe there could be “sponsors” that could come up with prizes. I don’t think that Typophile has a budget that would allow for it to pay for prizes on its own.

Also, judging is a big issue in its own right. Judges “make” a competition, don’t they? Either we could try to get “objective” judges from outside of typophile to do the judging (but who?), or we could arrange some sort of voting thing. I don’t like the idea of elevating a few people from within the Typophile community to ’judge’ status. But I also wonder if enough different kinds of people would vote if we had a voting system.

I think a Typophile type competition is a bad idea.

One of the distinctive features of Typophile is its democatic voice. The most experienced and accomplished and the novice can post alike, and are treated with pretty much the same kindness and cruelty.

This egalitarean voice has its drawbacks, but pretty much nowhere else is so open and equal. The market place of course is very competitive and always sorting out winners and losers, as well as competitions, so there is plenty of this in the world.

It is good that Typophile is a place of some respite from this. I don’t have a problem with Typophile being used by another sponsor to get democratic judging, but Typophile as a sponsor for judging critiqued faces it seems to me would put more pressure on those who submit for critiques.

What would be much better I think is if Typophile could
exert some “formal” influence on existing competitions.

hhp

I think that a type contest could be a good motivation for typophile to get more advertising.
A contest it´s more that a win/loose fight arena, it´s a high motivation event to get a huge expectation from the graphic market and media, to know new font developers from all over the world. Good prizes could from software(adobe, fontlab), a book with the contest´s submissions per year, contracts with big foundries, typophile membership extras, money, etc.

I see your point Miguel; it could work out. But somebody would have to do a lot of work on it, and Typophile is a volunteer venture, as I understand it.

The money come from the sponsors. But are they interesed in new type designs as a way to promote services/products?

Maybe the judges behind type designs could be graphic designers, not typenerds.

My Job, is a type design contest.

So, I have never understood type design contests and have never entered one knowingly...I would, however, be keen to sponsor several catagories, if there are such things: “Best use of OT in a Flash Movie”, “Best Tangents in a Revival” and “Best San Serif Subhead in a Cinematic Poster”.

Collaborate don’t compete.

Need they be mutually exclusive?

with due respect to the individuals, it’s not a panel who’ms (gr?)decisions I could respect.

whose, fyi... (sorry, couldn’t help myself)

What does everyone think about smaller, faster contests, like “3 italic characters to match xyz”? The community would decide who wins. They would be more like hip hop battles than stuffy contests with ceremonies and medals.

Hey, great idea. Maybe applied to existing fonts, like in my “Freestyle Remix Challenge” thread? One thing though: emphasizing speed in type design is dangerous.

hhp