Hasta La Ideas

Ahead of the announcement of the winners of this year’s Type Directors Club awards, we have the judges’ choices of their favourite projects this year

July 16 will see the opening reception and exhibition of the 60th Type Directors Club Communication Design Competition (TDC60) and the 17th annual TDC Typeface Design Competition (TDC 2014) in New York. In addition, each judge chose his or her personal favourite from all the entries, which are shown here.

Oliver Reichenstein (Information Architects) chose Hajime Tsushima‘s posters for the Japan Graphic Designers Association Hiroshima declaring ‘antiwar’ (below) and ‘peace’ (top)

Debra Bishop (More magazine) chose notebooks by Susanne Hoerner and Strichpunkt Design for typehype.com. “The Luise collection portrays the young Queen Luise of Prussia and the styles prevalent at the turn of the last century. The pages are completely blank with a deep-embossed hot-foil cover, which is available in 36 individual varieties from A to Z and 0 to 9. The endpaper protecting the brilliant-white pages features decorations to match the cover.”

And Ted Halbur from Target’s choice is the Drop Caps series of Penguin books, with covers designed by Jessica Hische, “a series of twenty-six collectible hardcover editions of fine works of literature, each featuring on its cover a specially commissioned illustrated letter of the alphabet”. Art director: Paul Buckley. Publisher and editorial director: Elda Rotor

Debbie Millman (Design Observer) chose the newly renovated Public Theater in New York designed by Pentagram‘s Paula Scher with Andrew Freeman, Courtney Gooch, Rafael Medina and Ennead Architects. “In the two decades since Paula Scher first designed the identity for the Public Theater, the exuberant graphics have become an iconic, welcoming presence in New York. For a major revitalization of the theater’s home in the historic Astor Library, Scher worked with renovation architects Ennead to translate the identity into an environment that celebrates the Public as a theater for the ‘public’. The reconfigured lobby centers on a circular front desk that doubles as a dimensional, large-scale version of the logo, while the various theaters are identified with typography inset into the building’s distinctive arches. The box office has been sniped with a colorful collage of Public posters designed by Scher. Outside, the restored façade features the logo rendered as a glass marquee canopy”. Principal type: Knockout

Photography: Peter Mauss, Esto Photography, and James Shanks

Will Staehle (willco)’s favoruite was the 3D-Printed book jacket by Helen Yentus which we feature in our March issue. Design: Helen Yentus and MakerBot (Thomas James). Project manager: Lisa D’Agostino and Nicholas Joshi (MakerBot). Production manager: John Sharp 3D consultant: Leonid Yentus  MakerBot studio director: Lane Feuer. Publisher: Riverhead Books. Principal type: Futura

Paul Sych (Faith) chose this poster by Wing Lau for Menace, an exhibition by illustrator Chris Yee at the Kind Of gallery in Sydney.”Instead of filling the poster with selected pieces of the artist’s work, they have been left out completely. The design resembles the grid structure of comic books, capturing the essence of how Yee wanted us to explore an epic world that is dangerous but exciting”.

Jackie Seow (Simon and Schuster) chose Uselessness is Gorgeous, part of Sagmeister & Walsh‘s The Happy Show at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Design: Jordan Amer, Santiago Carrasquilla, Simon Egli, Martin Gnat, Esther Li, Verena Michelitch, and Jessica Walsh (AD). CD: Stefan Sagmeister.

In the typeface competition, Ellen Lupton (MICA) chose Sori by Sebastian Moser, “a typeface that combines elements from the Latin and the Korean writing system (Hangul), in particular it takes the letters from the Latin alphabet and the rule of syllable formation from the Korean font system. As a result words are written in ‘block format’ (every syllable fits into an imaginary quadrant) instead of being written from left to right and one after another as we are used to in the English language. Each letter is designed in such a way that it nicely fits into the imaginary syllable block.” Programmer: Alexis Luengas. Concultant: Young-Hun Jung. School of Design of Pforzheim University

Jesse Ragan chose Metro Nova by Toshi Omagari: “The Metro Nova typeface is the next-generation version of William Addison Dwiggins’ Metro design, released into the Linotype library in 1930 as a sans serif typeface that was particularly popular in North America through the early 1950s. Metro Nova was created to meet today’s wide spectrum of digital and print requirements without sacrificing the appeal of the original Metro”

Andy Clymer (Hoefler & Co) chose Odesta by Ondrej Job of Urtd in Bratislava: “a decorative script typeface with detached strokes and pronounced ball terminals”

And finally Georg Seifert (Glyphs) picked Azer by Wael Morcos°, Ian Party and Pascal Zoghbi from 29Letters: “Azer in Arabic means friendly, ready to assist and lend a hand. This typeface combines simple lines with careful detailing to create a serious but approachable look. The Arabic is a Naskh / Kufi hybrid and retains a balance between calligraphic angular cuts and unadorned construction”