Greek type design
Every couple of years in June there’s this cool typography conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. Well, maybe more tropically warm, but you get the idea. This year, besides the conference and other events June 18-24, there’s a Greek type design contest. Luckily, you don’t even have to do a full typeface, just these words: ένα αναμφισβήτητα ξεχωριστό γεγονός.
The contest has a bunch of categories (text, display, pixel, experiemental) and you’re free to do anything from a traditional font to photography, video, animation or CGI. The deadline is May 31st, and there are valuable prizes. Details here (note the links at the top for all the different sections). Thanks to Eirini Vlachou for the tip!
In related news, the Type Directors Club in NYC is holding the second in a series of “Non-Latin Weekend” type design seminars, Oct 5-7. This time it’s Gerry Leonidas, on Greek type design. This is the same guy who consults for companies such as Adobe and Microsoft to help us get our Greek typefaces looking good. I’m hoping we can send two or three people, because this is sure to be worthwhile for anybody who would like to design Greek typefaces (or typefaces that include Greek, as most of ours do these days).
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The contest looks interesting and I am hoping to produce something to enter. Already the contest has caused me to start reading about Greek type in the Unicode standard. The contest has thus initiated an interesting topic for study. The good thing about such a contest is that even if I do not win a prize, I would still have a font which I would not otherwise have.This contest has rules and they are as they are.I wonder if I may put forward please a suggestion that people designing rules for other typeface competitions might like to consider the possibility of awarding a certificate to each entrant who reaches a certain standard, or maybe having several levels of certificates, or however they choose to do it.For a person hoping to become established as a type designer such a certificate would be of great value for inclusion in a personal portfolio: for an interested amateur such a certificate, once framed, could decorate a study wall for many years.The financial cost of producing even a hundred such certificates might not be too prohibitive and could transform contests into events where many entrants receive an award.William Overington8 May 2007