SportsComp Winners & Wrap Up
Competitions, News | afrojet | March 23rd, 2010
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.”
To help round out the judges panel we brought in some FontStruct alumni and FontShop heavyweights. The judging team consisted of: Rob Meek, Stephen Coles, Gustavo Ferreira, Ivan Bettger, and myself. The task of judging was made increasingly difficult by the great turnout of FontStructors. In the end we had 24 FontStuctors who created 44 one-of-a-kind entries in just two short weeks
Honorable Mentions
There were a number of entries to the competition that didn’t end up on the medal podium but we felt still deserve an honorable mention.
Newcomer to FontStruct, Lunicus, gave us the sleek italic Lunicus Downhill Line and carved up a smashing sample to boot.
Ring by superhuasteco and Rumble by jmarquez battled it out in the boxing/wrestleing ring. Both of these heavyweights were eminently usable and remained true to the brawny nature of the sport.
Inspired by Canada’s heroic gold medal victory at this years Winter Olympics, LexKominek‘s, Hockey Club evoked the ‘players dash, with skates aflash’. Rob Meek said, “Simply a great sports font. The maple leaf cutout, the thickset, italic lean‚ it really works as a concept. Go Canada!”
Aphoria came out with Scrollboard and showed exactly how his FontStruction could be used with those amazing animated GIFs. As Ivan Bettger commented, “It reminds me of mid-’80s sports arcade games, which is generally a feel-good phenomenon to remind one of.”
Djnippa made NCD Chromica a family affair with both sans and slab versions. Gustavo Ferreira wrote: “a solid neutral legible sans & serif family with a robust heavy-duty metallic treatment. very smart use of white spots to simulate light reflecting on the metal. convincingly chrome without resorting to greyscale or shading tricks. straight-forward and very usable.”
Butterfly by CMunk combined exciting and desperate elements to produce truly unique results. Of Butterfly, Rob Meek said, “Very original and characterful blend of modern sans, uncial and some kind of South Asian vibe. Surprisingly legible and with nice subtle variations in width considering the relatively low grid resolution used.”
We had hoped we might lure a few gems from the secret hoards of our top FontStructors with this competition and with both Geneus1 and the Funk King we were not disappointed. From Geneus1‘s bag of tricks we got the funky street stylings and beautiful angular work of Throwdown, the impeccably modern, Eurostile-inspired, and television-ready Neurostijl BXT as well as the highly versatile and typographically mature Academician Series. Overall there was a high degree of craftsmanship and FontStruct mastery present in all of Geneus1’s entries.
Early in the competition, I jokingly challenged FontStructs most prodigious and prolific FontStructor, the Funk King, to create “no less then half a dozen submissions”. Well I’m happy to report: challenge accepted and challenge crushed! Of his six submissions, the judges felt that Break, with its contorted and snapping letterforms and World Cup, with its custom built soccer ball über-brick and resulting pattern font deserved honorable mentions. Witnessing the Funk King’s output, I think we were all reminded again that there can only be one true King of FontStructlandia.
Medal Winners
And now, with all the pageantry and fanfare that comes with such a momentous occasion as this, here are the medal winners for the first-ever FontStruct competition.
Gold: Wypeout by Geneus1
Geneus1 takes the gold and the FontBook with his halftone masterpiece. It’s an incredible technical marvel and showcases Geneus1’s mastery of the FontStruct tool. The shapes and effects create a smart, usable font for unique applications and layouts.
Ivan Bettger on Wypeout: “Geneus1’s skill and technique is unsurpassed. Wypeout is like an Olympic figure skater who might not have given the most soulful performance, but it hit every axle and toe loop with precision.”
Silver: fs GO TEAM! by Thalamic
A FontStruct t-shirt goes to Thalamic and his future stencil, fs GO TEAM! The Go Team hit all the right notes for this competition. It was sporty, original, usable, and demonstrated the amazing potential of FontStruct when captained by such a skilled striker.
Rob Meek on fs Go TEAM: “Love the Yay! Very clever and very practical. Full of futuristic, sporty tension. Whatever that game is they play in Battlestar Galactica, this is what they should have on their shirts.”
Bronze: Sports Classic by rockhart
Walking away with the second FS t-shirt is Sports Classic. This gem is everything the name says it is. The style is evocative of classic collegiate lettering which Andrew Lockhart’s samples show off nicely. While dusting off his old leather helmet Ivan Bettger wrote of Sports Classic, “It somehow captured my eye instantly, like a star collegiate athlete who stands out on the court or field like a man amongst boys, destined for greatness, but all the while maintaining a humble respect for the sport and those that play it.”
And that’s it. Congratulations to our winners; you will be contacted this week to work out the shipping of prizes. Thanks again to all those who participated and played along. We learned a lot from this competition and greatly appreciate everyone’s feedback and comments. We’ll use it all when we start cooking up our next competition.
Congrats to the winners Genius1, Thalamic and Rockhart!
And congrats to all participants, I’m very glad to see all the newcomers to FS that this competition as brought.
– jmarquez — March 23, 2010 #
congratulations to all the winners. i’m sure judging this contest wasn’t easy, but i think your selections are valid and you gave proper consideration of all entries. thanks to the staff for doing this. although it would have been great to win a prize, i still got a lot of joy from participating. that’s cool.
– funk_king — March 23, 2010 #
Unbelievable!
Thanks Rob/Stewf/Gustavo/Ivan/John. You guys sure know how to put a smile on someone’s face. :D
Congratulations to Geneus1, a man who never fails to impress and inspire with each new offering. Thanks.
Congratulations too to Rockhart for playing the FontStructor like a seasoned champion.
This sure was fun. Wish afrojet could have taken part in it too.
Go FontStruct! Go Team!
– thalamic — March 23, 2010 #
Wow! Thanks @Fonstruct! There were lots of great entries and I’m sure it was a hard contest to judge.
@jmarquez & funk_king – Thanks!
@thalamic – Congrats to you too! It is def. a boost to win something like this after only a few Fontstructions.
– Rockhart — March 23, 2010 #
Yay!
Altough i’m a little sad, i didn’t even make it to being mentioned, i feel happy with the winners. Those fontstructions and artists totally deserve this! Congratulations and respect for the medal winners!
It was absolute fun and a welcome, succesful change. I want another one!
Theme: “space” :)
@rockhart:
Especially you did a nice start on fontstruct.
– kix — March 23, 2010 #
Thanks for the opportunity of challenging other fontstructors as well as ourselves. Congrats to the winners !
– Igor Rossi — March 23, 2010 #
Hearty congratulations to the worthy winners – and to those who received an honorable mention.
Well, that was a fun filled few weeks, that added to the FS experience. Here’s to the next challenge :)
– p2pnut — March 23, 2010 #
@kix I’m sure ‘Olympic Spirit’ would have been a major contender had you been able to provide a sample before the close of the competition deadline. Next time you need to plan your band tour around the FontStruct competition ;-)
– afrojet — March 23, 2010 #
Congratulations to geneus1, thalamic and rockhart and participants with honorable mention! Thanks for mention to Ring! The comp was really fun and interesting. I will be waiting for the next one.
Thanks again!
– superhuasteco — March 23, 2010 #
Congratulations to the winner, Geneus1. All your entries were great works. And having so many of them (Academician series, Talladega Knight, ThrowDown, Neurostijl BXT, Wypeout) you certainly didn’t leave much for chance.
Congratulations to the silver and bronze medalist, Thalamic and Rockhart, respectively, and all the other participants, who submitted some extraordinary designs. I very much liked Mionta by Neoqueto, and expected to see more of this trendy style.
One notable omission from the top list is NCD Chromica Slab 2 by djnippa. Unfortunately the great demo pics were published after the 12th March deadline, therefore could not be considered by the jury. It’s a shame really, and he is not alone, who felt the 12 days very short.
– Frodo7 — March 24, 2010 #
Great work, everyone! Thanks for the mention. It’s cool to be in the company of such awesome fontstructors :-)
– Lex Kominek — March 24, 2010 #
Congrats to all the winners…looking forward to another competition.
Maybe we could have a “People’s Choice” award? It wouldn’t have to have a prize, but maybe a badge?
– aphoria — March 24, 2010 #
@aphoria: good suggestion on the “people
s choice” award. Favoriting and standard FS voting, I guess were this contest’s people’s choice. Perhaps next time we’ll try to formalize it a bit more.
Keep the suggestions and feedback coming folks. Really appreciate it. Should the next contest run longer then two weeks? Were folks feeling the time crunch?
– afrojet — March 24, 2010 #
i don’t know. i think the time was enough, but for others it may not have been. i’ve often thought about organizing something like a ‘weekend rumble’ where fontstructors participate in a weekend contest to create a themed font. 48 hrs to complete and then judged and awarded the following week. i think using favoriting would be a great way to do informal voting. no prizes, just bragging rights and perhaps being a featured selection after winning. maybe once a quarter to coincide with an international holiday or world event – like new year’s day, world hunger day, earth day, changing seasons, etc. maybe a cool way for fontsruct to become a little more political? but still having fun as a community. or maybe even a ‘font relay’ where teams are formed and each member is responsible to certain glyphs, still within the ‘weekend rumble’ timeframe. of course, all of this takes time to organize and create formal rules. still, something maybe for the future.
– funk_king — March 24, 2010 #
oh, and thanks for the honorable mentions. it’s nice to get noticed :)
– funk_king — March 24, 2010 #
I thought the amount of time was fine, but an extra week would be ok.
I don’t think you want to drag it out too long though.
– aphoria — March 24, 2010 #
I like the rumble idea. It would be great to have a live event.
– Rob Meek (meek) — March 24, 2010 #
Awesome! First I was happy when I saw WypeOut was a Top Pick in the Live Feed yesterday. Then I was a little sad thinking that it was a Top Pick because it didn’t make it into the top 3. Then I was really happy and surprised to see it was the Gold Medal Winner in the blog. Then I was a little sad again when I saw my name wasn’t spelled correctly. Then I was a little happy to see that it wasn’t just me, because Ivan’s name wasn’t spelled correctly either. Then I got happy again when it dawned on me that I’m the first ever FontStruct competition winner. 8-D This is a great honor.
Thank you FontStruct Team for holding this competition. It was really fun to participate. Thanks to all for the congratulatory remarks. Congratulations to Thalamic and Rockhart on their medal wins. Special thanks go to Funk King for pushing that little extra out of me. Kudos to all participants and the great inspirational work that was produced for this event, from our introductory fontstructors to our seasoned regulars. I look forward to the next one. Ready to rumble.
Something special from me is coming up really soon. Stay tuned… :-)
– geneus1 — March 24, 2010 #
I think the amount of time is fine. (I just happened to be really busy during those two weeks.) But I really enjoyed it and would love to participate in future competitions.
Congrats to all the winners and thanks to the FS crew on putting together a fun competition.
– Bob Wertz — March 24, 2010 #
Like most people, I work full time during the week, but also at the weekends I’m busy DJing and promoting parties. Two weeks wasn’t quite enough time for me to fully conclude my particular fonts. In fact, I think I just made the deadline by mere minutes.
As a perfectionist, I always find, that the ‘after design’ process takes a lot longer than normal, the kerning, usability, tweaking, the readability, additional character set and then there’s the samples!
Since ‘making public’ my fonts I have already designed 6 other fonts based around the same NCD Chromica grid, and after extensive usability tests, found a few elements that I was not 100% happy with, it all seemed a little rushed. I’d prefer 4 weeks next time. I was also confounded by a few days with several ‘glitch’ bricks. The ones that when you delete them, they then stop you saving your current progression. A real pain in the ass.
I also think it a little strange that full character sets were not submitted on all entries. Surely numbers are very important to any SPORTS FONT?
– djnippa — March 24, 2010 #
@geneus1 I hope it makes you a little happy that I’ve corrected the spelling of your name in the text. And not too sad when you notice that I haven’t corrected it in the image. And perhaps happy once more to know that the lingering misspelling in the image means that your comment will make sense for eternity.
– Rob Meek (meek) — March 25, 2010 #
Congrats to all the winning and mentioned fontstructs.
Even if some entries were not my cup of tea–not for the lack of quality, but for their blandness– it was great to see how diverse the submissions were!
@afrojet: For me the terms of the competition were OK: two weeks are enough, especially if you plan to have several competitions a year.
– Em — March 25, 2010 #
Shame it was the two weeks when I was working 24/7… Would have loved to submit something too, but simply didn’t have the time.
Next time! :)
– shasta — March 25, 2010 #
@geneus1 One thousand apologies for the name misspell. I’ll see about swapping out the image and correcting your name. Happiness is what we aim for…
– afrojet — March 25, 2010 #