Brick by brick: News about FontStruct
Posts filed under “Competitions”
The FontStruct community has proven that its members can breathe life into the grid, make the organic from the static, and push modularity to its creative limits. That’s why we have no qualms in assigning you with a formidable challenge for the next FontStruct competition: scripts!
This, of course, raises the question: what is a script? It’s a fair query. Some define the classification much more broadly than others. Scripts are most commonly and fundamentally derived from writing, but that leaves a lot of room for variation and interpretation. A formal copperplate script is as worthy of the title as the freehand bounce of a sign painter’s brush.
Must the letters be connected? Not all handwriting is cursive, after all. Some folks lift their pen off the paper from time to time, or even between every letter, as in the case of “print” writing.
These professional typefaces from FontShop offer an idea of the variety of lettershapes and stroke connections that scripts can embody. From top to bottom: Tangier, FIG Script, Bickham Script, Cottingley, Handsome, Bery Script, BistroScript.
In the end, scripts always reach back to a common ancestory: handwriting. But must it look like it was made by hand? A typeface can be as geometric and constructed as FIG and rightfully be called a script. And we’ve already challenged you to explore the “handmade”. So, for this competition, the core requirement will be a connected script.
Design your FontStructions so letters connect in the most natural and/or innovative way. Keep in mind that connections don’t always need to be at the baseline, or share a common height, throughout the glyph set. And if a letter just doesn’t feel right with a connection, omit the link. (BistroScript, for example, flows naturally, even though it’s ‘s’ doesn’t meet neighbors to the right.) With this guideline in mind, you’re allowed up to 5 linkless lowercase glyphs. Your uppercase, numbers, and punctuation don’t need to connect — but they may catch the jury’s eye if they do!
Other than that, the brief is fairly open. For this competition, as long as your lowercase glyphs are independently distinguishable and connect to each other, it’s a script! Of course, the judges will be looking for original and well-executed entries overall, but they will focus on the most graceful or inventive connections. It’s all about the flow.
While it’s the most underrepresented category on FontStruct, there are several notable scripts in the Gallery. Here are some fine examples of what can be done. Top to bottom: High Voltage (shasta, featured in PCWorld), Bromance (em42), fs grayletter (thalamic), Dry Heat (CMunk, a set of three fonts for connection options).
Competition Time Period
May 23 – June 14, 2013
Competition Rules
- You must be a registered FontStruct user.
- Your submission must have a connecting lowercase, with up to 5 exempt (unlinked) glyphs.
- Your submission(s) must be posted and made “public” between May 23 – June 14 2013. Although you are encouraged to share your submission(s) at any time between these dates, your FontStruction submission(s) must be public (marked “share with everyone”) no later then June 14 at 11pm PST. Additionally, your submission(s) must remain public until June 30 in order to give the judges enough time to review all qualifying entries.
- Your submission(s) must be tagged with a “ScriptComp” tag. (For fairness, during the competition time period, no FontStruction with the “ScriptComp” tag will be awarded a Top Pick or be available for a Featured FontStruction pick.)
- Your submission(s) must be downloadable. If your FontStruction cannot be downloaded, the submission will be disqualified.
- Your submission must be a newly published FontStruction. Simply adding the “ScriptComp” tag to an already published font is not allowed.
- For each submission, you must post at least one sample image in the comments of the FontStruction.
- No letters in each submission can be MORE THAN 48 bricks high.
- FontStruct cloning is permitted but the judges will be looking for original work.
- You may enter up to three FontStructions to the competition.
- This is a friendly competition. Cheering, favoriting and fun banter is encouraged but cruel and uncivil behavior will not be tolerated.
- No rules regarding licensing. You may choose any Creative Commons license you like for your FontStruction.
Tips
- The new Kites, Shards, and Fins bricks may come in handy for this genre.
- Connecting strokes can be part of each glyph, or they can be a separate character (such as the space) that elegantly binds letters together.
- Connecting strokes can be on either side of the glyph — or both!
Judging and announcing the winners
All qualifying FontStructions will by judged by the FontStruct staff and guest judges, June 15–30. Three prizewinners will be chosen. One of these will be the FontStructors’ Favorite. Winners will be announced in a FontStruct Blog post on July 2.
Prizes
Each winner will receive their choice of
In addition, all winners will have their winning FontStructions posted as Featured FontStructions for two weeks after the winners are announced.
FontStructors’ Favorite
The valid entry with the greatest number of legitimate favorites at 11pm PST on June 14 will be one of the three prizewinners.
Spread the Word
Tell your friends. The 
button floating above every FontStruction is a really quick and easy way to point your friends and followers to your work. Maybe you can drum up some more 
s for your entry in that way, or entice some novice FontStructors into the game.
Questions?
If you have questions just add them as comments to this post.
Let’s get FontStructing!
The Stencil competition was a resounding success. We saw a record number of entries (70!), a great diversity and originality of approach, and overall an extremely high standard of FontStructing.
I was a bit unsure about the “Stencil” theme when we chose it for this competition. I thought people might find it hard to produce something fresh with so many great stencil designs on FontStruct already. How wrong I was to underestimate the creative energy of the FontStruct community. Well done everyone!
The Winners
Down to business. There was one standout winner which appeared in each judge’s top three, and was also chosen by the community as the “FontStructor’s Favorite”: “db Smoothie” by beate. db Smoothie is an unusual, but highly usable and technically-perfect stencil-FontStruction. Ray Larabie wrote:
db Smoothie bolsters the stencil cuts by lopping tops and bottoms strategically. But it does it in a way that accentuates the differences between letters. That’s something that a lot of other entries missed. You can minimize without making letters look uniform and overly modular.
In fact beate could have won several times over. Ray also enthused over “db Karton” (seen in the image at the head of this post):
db Karton avoids the usual stencil cliches and goes with a counter-less style. I love how the C & G avoid the commonplace “Pac Man” deco pastiche. The squared sharps allow a tight fit, which makes it really useful as a poster or headline font.
So well done beate!
The second winner is Thorin by Frodo7. Ray was smitten by its subtle qualities:
Thorin was my favorite entry. There are a lot of soft stencils around that would fit with a classic military theme, but Thorin has a plausible, contemporary military style. The optimal cuts and low-res polygonal flavor evoke an eerie digital camouflage voice.
Congratulations Frodo7!
The third winner is the brilliantly named and executed Crazy Fredericka by four, a fun, legible and eminently usable form of insanity. High five four!
Winners will be contacted soon about their prizes.
If you entered and didn’t win, please don’t be sad. You were all amazing. And of course if you can’t wait for the next competition to win a poster, you can still order it.
Special Mentions and Thanks
In the course of the competition we were delighted to welcome back funk_king and geneus1 to public FontStructing. Their spectacular returns for the Stencilcomp are one more good reason to hold competitions more often.
We’ve also recently seen the welcome return of jmarquez and, assuming I haven’t been fooled by some nifty photoshopping, congratulations on the amazing knifework for the competition sample!
Finally thank you to will.i.ૐ for his truly incredible innovations most recently in this competition, his willingness to share and unsung, behind-the-scenes volunteer work on FontStruct.
The Judges
Protective hats off to our guest judge Ray Larabie, and honorary staff judge Stephen Coles who gave us a lot of their valuable time for free. As you can imagine it takes to long time to have a conscientous look at 70 FontStructions.
Ray Larabie is a Canadian font designer who has, for the past 15 years, created over 500 font families. He continues to create new fonts in his new home in Nagoya, Japan. More info about.me/raylarabie
Stephen Coles is an honorary FontStruct staff member, writer, typographer. Editor of Fonts In Use, Typographica, and The Mid-Century Modernist. He lives in Oakland & Berlin.
Rob Meek designs, develops and runs FontStruct.
And finally
Watch this space. We’ve got some new bricks coming soon.
In the meantime. Happy FontStructing!
It’s been quite a while since FontStructors have had the chance to battle for fun, honour and prizes in an official competition. Now, the wait is over.
The brief for this latest competition is to design a FontStruction for stenciling. All entries to this competition should be some form of stencil FontStruction published on or before October 12th 13th 2012 and tagged with “Stencilcomp“.
There’s quite a diverse collection of wonderful stencil designs in the FontStruct gallery already, both categorized and tagged, and FontShop also has a huge collection of stencils fonts to admire. But, perhaps a better place to look for original inspiration would be in your life and in the world around you. We hope you will be gripped by the pragmatic and purposeful spirit of the stenciling tradition.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with stenciling you can find lots of great resources online – introductions and tutorials, both basic and detailed. One important idea is that of islands and bridges. For a reusable stencil there can be no islands without bridges! Here are some examples including a Helvetica “O” with its isolated island, some stencil letters with bridges (in yellow), and an apocalyptic approach – no islands!
Every entry to this competition should be accompanied by an uploaded sample. You certainly don’t have to, but we would strongly recommend making and applying an actual stencil from your work.
Here are a few examples of great stencil designs from the FontStruct’s archive. Below that come the detailed competition rules which you should read before entering.
Competition time period
September 21st – October 12th 2012
Competition rules
1. You must be a registered FontStruct user.
2. Your submission(s) must be posted and made “public” between September 20th – October 12th 13th 2012. Although you are encouraged to share your submission(s) at any time between these dates, your FontStruction submission(s) must be public (marked “share with everyone”) no later then October 12th 13th at 11pm PST. Additionally, your submission(s) must remain public until October 26th in order to give the judges enough time to review all qualifying entries.
3. Your submission(s) must be tagged with a “StencilComp” tag. (For fairness, during the competition time period, September 21st to October 26th, no FontStruction with the “StencilComp” tag will be awarded a Top Pick or be available for a Featured FontStruction pick.)
4. Your submission(s) must be downloadable. If your FontStruction cannot be downloaded, the submission will be disqualified.
5. Your submission must be a newly published FontStruction. Simply adding the “StencilComp” tag to an already published font is not allowed.
6. For each submission, you must post at least one sample image in the comments of the FontStruction.
7. No letters in each submission can be MORE THAN 48 bricks high.
8. FontStruct cloning is permitted but the judges will be looking for original work.
9. You may enter up to three FontStructions to the competition.
10. This is a friendly competition. Cheering, favoriting and fun banter is encouraged but cruel and uncivil behavior will not be tolerated.
11. No rules regarding licensing. You may choose any Creative Commons license you like for your FontStruction.
Judging and announcing the winners
All qualifying FontStructions will by judged by the FontStruct staff and guest judges, between the October 13th 14th and October 20th. Three prizewinners will be chosen. One of these will be the FontStructors’ Favorite. Winners will be announced in a FontStruct Blog post on October 26th.
Prizes
All winners will receive a signed and numbered copy of the FontStruct poster.
In addition, all winners will have their winning FontStructions posted as Featured FontStructions for two weeks after the winners are announced.
FontStructors’ Favorite
The valid entry with the greatest number of legitimate favorites at 11pm PST on October 12th 13th will be one of the three prizewinners.
Spread the Word
Tell your friends. The button floating above every FontStruction is a really quick and easy way to point your friends and followers to your work. Maybe you can drum up some more s for your entry in that way, or entice some novice FontStructors into the game.
Questions?
If you have questions just add them as comments to this post.
Let’s get FontStructing!
The judges have deliberated and now it’s time to announce the results in the FontStruct “Illustration” competition for illustrative, modular typefaces.
It was especially hard work judging this time. Not only was there a record number of entries, but without the underlying coherence of an alphabet, the fonts often did not reveal their qualities at first glance. The judges needed to examine the entire character set, and look at the font at different sizes. Samples were also even more important than usual. The diversity of approaches to the brief taken by designers made it difficult to find common judging criteria, and about fourteen different entries were mentioned in the judges notes. Amazingly, despite this, three clear winners did emerge. Before we get to them, let’s review some of the other entries mentioned by the judges. Continue reading…
After the great success of the first two FontStruct competitions, “Handmade” and the “SportsComp“, we’re launching our third competition with the theme of “Illustration” and more great prizes.
The results are in for the second FontStruct competition “Handmade”. It was a thrilling three weeks with some quite extraordinary FontStructing and offline handiwork appearing on the site. I hope all participants and everyone else had as much fun as I did. The standard of entries was extremely high, making the task of judging an extremely difficult. The judges came up with a very broad and diverse range of favorites, but once the votes had been added together, some clear winners emerged. Continue reading…
The Handmade competition is now closed for entries.
Thank you, thank you everyone for taking part, and for all your incredible work. I’m truly amazed at the quality and range of entries this time around. I’ve enjoyed watching all the entries appearing over the past three weeks and I sense that enjoyment has been shared by many of you. The winners will be announced in a blog post on the 18th of October. In fact there are plenty of entries which deserve a blog post to themselves.
Important: Don’t forget to “heart” your favorites over the next week for the people’s choice award. This favorite voting will stop at 11pm PST on October 15th.
You can view all the entries in the gallery or you can follow this link and use the “Next” and “Previous” links at the top of each page to marvel at each entry in detail, one after the other.
The last competition was a huge success. Today, by popular request, we’re launching a new one with the theme “Handmade”. And yes, there are prizes.
Continue reading…
We’re going to need a bigger podium.
The first-ever FontStruct competition is a wrap and we, the FontStruct staff, think it was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who played, commented, cheered, favorited and judged. Everyone came together in the spirit of play to produce some outstanding results. The high level of quality FontStructions made this sports competition nearly impossible for the judges to pick just three winners. I think Rob Meek summed up the hard task facing the judges when he wrote in an email:
“People produced some incredible and diverse work and every entry needed to be looked at in detail in order to try and make a fair judgement. I’m only glad that there are other judges.”
Continue reading…
Welcome to the first-ever FontStruct competition
The 2010 Winter Olympics have come to a close but the memories of daring triple axles, stratosphere-surfing Double McTwists, and barnstorming bobsled runs are still fresh in our minds. In the spirit of Olympic world-wide fellowship we are thrilled to kick off our first-ever FontStruct competition.
Competition brief:
This is a friendly competition amongst FontStructors to see who can create the best sports themed FontStruction. To enter, you must create and publish a new FontStruction that plays into the world of sports, athletics and competition. You can draw inspiration from your favorite sport, your favorite team, your favorite athlete, your favorite jersey, — whatever! Whether you want to create a slab serif or a script, a dingbat or a pictogram, we’d love to see it. If you think your submission has any kind of sports application then GO FOR IT!
If sports isn’t your thing, don’t worry. We want to keep the competition broad and encourage all FontStructors to join in on the fun. Keep in mind there are numerous examples of typefaces in the world that are not specifically designed for sport but work well in that context. Look no further then the recent Winter Olympics, where the Vancouver Organizing Committee chose the stylish Neo® Sans and the modular BD Brick as their primary and secondary typefaces.
For more sport type inspiration, check out: the Sports tag on FontStruct and my recent blog post on FontStructors and their love of sport. You’d also do well to browse through a few of FontShop’s hand-picked lists. See: Sports, Collegiate Athletics, and Sports Scrips.
Competition time period:
March 1st – March 12th
Eligibility:
You must be a registered FontStruct user.
Competition rules:
1. Your submission(s) must be posted and made “public” between March 1st – March 12th. Although you are encouraged to share your submission(s) at any time between the 1st and the 12th, your FontStruction submission(s) must be public (marked “share with everyone”) no later then March 12th at 11pm PST. Additionally, your submission(s) must remain public until March 19th in order to give the judges enough time to review all qualifying entries.
2. Your submission(s) must be tagged with a “SportsComp” tag. (For fairness, during the competition time period (March 1st – March 12th) no FontStruction with the “SportsComp” tag will be awarded a Top Pick or be available for a Featured FontStruction pick)
3. Your submission(s) must be downloadable. If your FontStruction breaks the FontMortar, the submission will be disqualified.
4. Your submission must be a newly posted FontStruction. Simply adding the “SportsComp” tag to an already existing font is strictly prohibited.
5. For each submission, you must post at least one sample image in the comments of the FontStruction.
6. FontStruct cloning is permitted but the judges will be looking for original work.
7. You may enter as many FontStructions to the competition as you like.
8. This is a friendly competition. Cheering, favoriting and fun banter is encouraged but cruel and uncivil behavior will not be tolerated.
Licensing:
No rules regarding licensing. You may choose any Creative Commons license you like for your FontStruction.
Judging:
All qualifying FontStructions will by judged by the FontStruct staff.
Formal judging period:
March 13th – March 19th.
Winner announcement:
Winners will be announced in a FontStruct Blog post on Monday, March 22nd, 2010.
Awards:
Gold, silver, and bronze medals. Judges will determine winners and medal order.
Prizes:
Gold medal wins a copy of the coveted FontBook by FontShop International. An amazing prize this. FontBook is the most complete digital type reference in the world. Since 1991, “the big yellow book” has been the trusted friend of designers, typographers, advertisers, manufacturers, publishers, historians, and anyone else who uses type.
Silver & bronze medal win t-shirts from the FontStruct Shop. Winning this t-shirt will greatly simplify your wardrobe as you’ll never want to leave the house without wearing FontStruct close to your heart.
In addition, all medal winners will have their winning FontStructions posted as Featured FontStructions for two weeks starting March 22nd.
Have a question? Leave me a note in the comments and I’ll get it answered.
Ready…Set…FontStruct!
